Tvärbanan is a light rail line in Stockholm, Sweden. Its name literally translated into English is Crossways line. It links together many bus and rail lines crossways through its connections with the southern, western and northern subway branches of the Stockholm Metro and the Stockholm commuter rail. The possibility to travel between southern, western and northern greater Stockholm without having to enter the city centre significantly reduces the number of transit passengers, also reducing the number of trains having to pass through the Old Town bottleneck during peak hours. Near Liljeholmen the track is shared with freight traffic in a short section, this being the only place in Sweden where freight traffic and trams share the same track. The tramway is separated from roads in most parts, but there are sections in Gröndal, Sundbyberg and Solna where the tracks run on roads among regular road traffic. In Hammarby sjöstad the trams run in a reservation in the centre of the road rather than in mixed traffic, but there are several level crossings. Traffic on Tvärbanan started in 2000, first between Gullmarsplan and Liljeholmen, then later between Liljeholmen and Alvik, in 2002 between Gullmarsplan and Sickla Udde, and in 2013 between Alvik and Solna centrum. It has later been extended to Solna Station and Sickla, respectively. Tvärbanan was used by around 90,500 passengers per weekday in 2017. The bridges used by Tvärbanan include Alviksbron, Gröndalsbron, Fredriksdalsbron and.
Lines
Tvärbanan has a single line with 26 stops, going from Sickla south of the Stockholm city centre through Gullmarsplan,, Liljeholmen, Gröndal, Stora Essingen, Alvik west of the city centre, and Sundbyberg to Solna. The part to Solna Centrum opened 28 October 2013, and the final part to Solna Station opened 18 August 2014. A single-stop extension from Sickla udde to Sickla opened on 2 October 2017. The Friends Arena can be reached within 15 minutes' walk from there. Bromma Airport is a 600-metre walk from Karlsbodavägen stop.
Thirty-seven Flexity Swift low-floor trams run on the line. Six of them are second hand and imported in 2010 from the RijnGouweLijn-project in the Netherlands. Fifteen new trams have been ordered from Spanish CAF and they started operation in October 2013 on the Solna extension.
Signalling system
Tvärbanan has suffered from a long-standing issue of incompatible and low performing rail signalling systems. A signalling system monitors and controls the movements of rolling stock on a rail network to ensure safe operation. The Tvärbanan network features multiple different signalling systems from different vendors, because when the rail line was built even the signalling systems were tendered separately for each construction stage. A visible example of this has been at the Alvik station, which is a break point between two systems. Even though the line runs straight at Alvik, the same train could not be run past the station because of the incompatibility of the systems. Passengers had to switch trains there, for example when traveling from Stora Essingen to Sundbyberg. The section south of Alvik was closed during the summer of 2017 to upgrade the signalling. The new signalling system is operating since 5 August 2017 from Solna Station to Stora Essingen.
