Critical infrastructure systems—such as transportation—are the backbone of society. Infrastructuredevelopment can thus be acknowledged as a common societal concern in the field ofgovernance, and its recognition as a policy problem is crucial to proper decision making. This studyaims to build an in-depth understanding of the multi-level system concerned with transportation andapplies a soft systems methodology to structure the investigation. The system analysis and conceptualmodelling rests on publicly available documents and policies, group meetings and a workshop withstakeholders from the local, regional and national levels. The paper provides a thorough analysis ofthe Swedish transportation system through public policy and the perceptions of municipal officials. Inaddition, it proposes a novel conceptual framework of the transportation system, including a detaileddiscussion of stakeholders, activities and perspectives. Although transportation is vital for manystakeholders, improving only transport infrastructure does not guarantee regional growth. Therefore,the proposed framework constitutes a novel basis for constructive dialogue among concerned partiesregarding improvements to transportation. Thereby, the paper provides an understanding of asociety’s transportation system that can be used to inform agenda setting for critical infrastructuregovernance. Further discussion in the scientific community and with officials entrusted with publicadministration could further validate and deepen the proposed understanding of the perspectivesand constraints in the examined context and beyond.