Transport in Sweden


Transport in Sweden is available for all four main modes of transport—air, bus, ferry and rail—assisting residents and visitors without their own vehicle to travel around much of Sweden's.

Rail

Rail transport is operated by SJ, VR Sverige, Green Cargo, Vy Tåg and more. Most counties have companies that provide ticketing, marketing and financing of local passenger rail, but the actual operation is undertaken by the aforementioned companies. There are about 15,700 km of railway, of which 14,400 km is nationalised and the remaining 1,300 km is owned by other operators. As of 2025, about 12,200 km of the railway is electrified. While most of the rails are built with a gauge, more commonly known as standard gauge, there are about 261 km in, or Swedish three foot gauge. These tracks are mostly reserved for heritage railways however and only the Roslagsbanan has regular passenger traffic.
Trains generally keep to the left, as opposed to all neighbouring countries, a legacy of Sweden’s driving direction prior to 1967. The exception to this is in southern Sweden, where trains south of Arlöv north of Malmö run with right hand traffic.

Light rail and metros

Stockholm Metro is the only metro system in Sweden.
Cities with light rail ;
Stockholm previously had a large tram network, but this was discontinued in favour of bus and metro; a revival of the tram network was seen in the construction of Tvärbanan in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Railway links with adjacent countries

Road

Sweden has right-hand traffic today, like all its neighbours.
Sweden had left-hand traffic from approximately 1736 and continued to do so until 1967. Despite this virtually all cars in Sweden were actually left-hand drive and the neighbouring Nordic countries already drove on the right, leading to mistakes by visitors. The Swedish voters rejected a change to driving on the right in a referendum held in 1955.
Nevertheless, in 1963 the Riksdag passed legislation ordering the switch to right-hand traffic. The changeover took place on a Sunday morning at 5am on September 3, 1967, which was known in Swedish as Dagen H, the 'H' standing for Högertrafik or right-hand traffic.
Since Swedish cars were left-hand drive, experts had suggested that changing to driving on the right would reduce accidents, because drivers would have a better view of the road ahead. Indeed, fatal car-to-car and car-to-pedestrian accidents did drop sharply as a result. This was likely due to drivers initially being more careful and because of the initially very low speed limits, since accident rates soon returned to nearly the same as earlier.
Total roadways: 572,900 km, as of 2009.

Motorways

Motorways run through Sweden, Denmark and over the Öresund Bridge to Stockholm, Gothenburg, Uppsala and Uddevalla. The system of motorways is still being extended. The longest continuous motorways are Värnamo–Gävle and the Norwegian border–Vellinge.

Ports and harbours

There are of waterways in Sweden.
There are 19 ports which are navigable to small steamers and barges.

Air

In 2012, there were 230 airports in Sweden. Of these, 149 have paved runways, with three being over long. There are over eighty airports with unpaved runways. A large number of war-time airfields exist in various lengths, usually built into roads, and are usually less than long.
Every hospital, airport and military base has a helipad.

List of large airports