DENMARK’s minister for transport, Thomas Danielsen, has announced that he is terminating the contract held by GoCollective, which operates passenger services in Jutland and Funen, citing an unacceptable level of delays and cancellations, as high as 80% on one line.

The minister will appoint Danish State Railways (DSB) to take over all GoCollective services, but further details of how and when this will happen, including future rolling stock deployment, have yet to be announced.

In June 2024 Danielsen issued a written instruction to GoCollective requiring the company to address the level of service cancellations by the end of last year.

GoCollective is owned by German private equity fund Mutares, which in May 2023 purchased the Danish operations of Arriva from German Rail (DB). GoCollective is Denmark’s largest private public transport operator with over 2000 employees, and the second-largest passenger operator after DSB.

Arriva won the first passenger operating contract to be tendered in Denmark in 2003, covering regional services in Central and Western Jutland. This contract was retained in 2009 and 2018 when the Vejle - Struer line was added, together with Odense - Svendborg in Funen. The current contract was due to expire in 2028.

GoCollective now operates the following lines:

  • Esbjerg - Niebüll
  • Herning - Skjern - Esbjerg
  • Struer - Vejle
  • Aarhus - Herning - Struer
  • Aarhus - Langå - Struer
  • Thisted - Struer
  • Esbjerg - Nørre Nebel, and
  • Odense - Svendborg.

Covering a total of 665km and serving 117 stations, GoCollective’s current operations amount to 25% of the Danish network, according to the company, carrying 10 million passengers a year. GoCollective operates a fleet of 59 DMUs, comprising 43 Alstom Coradia Lint 41 trains and 15 Siemens Desiro DMUs.

GoCollective response

In a statement, GoCollective expressed its sincere disappointment at the minister’s announcement, adding that it must respect the political decision and prepare for the negotiations that will now take place.

“While no final decision has been taken, the political signal has been that the ministry seeks a smooth transfer of GoCollective’s contract to another operator, with uninterrupted operations during the transition period,” the company says.

“The minister also underlined that a transfer would involve significant costs, as that would imply the ministry purchasing GoCollective’s rolling stock.”

“We have been in ongoing dialogue with the Ministry of Transport and have clearly set out the challenges we face as a train operator,” says GoCollective CEO, Marianne Bøttger.

Electrification announced

At the same time as the move to end the GoCollective contract, the minister announced the decision to electrify the 100km single-track Struer - Vejle line. This was despite the concerns of political parties supporting Denmark’s major electrification and ERTMS programmes that it would be too expensive for the relatively small number of passengers using the service.

The prospect of losing direct services to Copenhagen from this part of Jutland, without a change of trains in Vejle, persuaded the government to provide the entire DKr 3bn ($US 474m) needed to fund the cost of electrification. DSB’s new fleet of IC5 EMUs being supplied by Alstom, the first of which was delivered to Copenhagen on September 16, is not equipped with traction batteries.