Drive Sweden – cleared for take-off

“All meeting participants seemed excited about the fact that we are now finally entering the operational phase. There was a lot of optimism and high expectations in the room”, Jan Hellåker, Program Director for Drive Sweden, said.

The new board is essentially a continuation of the interim board that governed the program during its start-up phase during 2015.

This is the new Drive Sweden program board

(from left in photo)

• Karl-Henrik Johansson, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
• Gerhard Wennerström, Samtrafiken
• Jacob Gramenius, Swedish Transport Agency
• Orvar Hurtig, Ericsson
• Agneta Wargsjö, Swedish Transport Administration
• Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd (Chairwoman)
• Urban Karlström, Forum for transportinnovation
• Niklas Wahlberg, Lindholmen Science Park
• Mattias Lundberg, City of Stockholm
• Tord Hermansson, Volvo Cars
• Jan Thörnqvist, Saab (Not present)
• Niklas Gustavsson, Volvo Group (Not present)

After the Annual meeting formalities, the full-day meeting continued with a comprehensive overview on planned activities for 2016 and onwards. Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd (Chairwoman) and Jan Hellåker (Program Director) first set the scene by summing-up what had happened last year and reiterated the over-arching objectives for the program. Then followed detailed presentations from each of the sub-programs in which the respective leaders outlined their plans for how our funding will be spent over the coming years.

New partners

In a board meeting after the Annual meeting, partner applications from the following organizations were formally approved:

• Norconsult
• Transdev
• WSP Sweden
• Googol 
• Samtrafiken

This brings the total number of partner organizations to 27. 

Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd (Chairwoman) and Jan Hellåker (Program Director)