The way it was privatised essentially guaranteed monopolies, though. Each segment is available ona multi-year lease for one operator. There are actually some se

The way it was privatised essentially guaranteed monopolies, though. Each segment is available ona multi-year lease for one operator. There are actually some segments that have multiple operators, but that's actually the exception. When Sweden privatised rail traffic, it still kept the track ownership in a single entity, and train operators bid for slots on the existing rail network. This gets you into a somewhat healthy competition between operators, hopefully (longer-term) driving down the price and driving up the quality for consumers. Comparing air and rail, a first class train ticket between Malmö and Stockholm (most direct car route seems to be 613 km) is (with the ex-monopoly train operator) 895 SEK to 1 735 SEK , and is about 4.5h city centre to city centre. A flight seems to be between 862 SEK (RyanAir, one carry-on luggage, 168 SEK with nothing, they say) and about 300 SEK. Listed flight time is 1h 20, airport would either be MMX or CPH (the latter has really good rail from the same rail station as the train in the previous para, taking about 21 minutes, then maybe 3-10 minutes at the airport). On the Stockholm end, you have either the fast airport train (ca 15 minutes), the slower (but cheaper) commuter train (ca 40 minutes) or airport buses (probably similar price as the commuter train, about the same speed at no traffic at all). Total travel time for "same start, same destination", train 4h 30m, airplane maybe 3-4h. I don't, genuinely, know what "class of service" the plane would be, ut short-haul you get pretty much the same seats and you may have the middle seat unoccupied for "business". And for reference, London Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley is 645 km by car, using the same route planner