When we make a list of what we’re looking for when we settle down (if we settle down), good public transportation is close to the top. Neither of us wants to have to drive to get to places. Laurel has never liked driving. John is all driven out, having spent more than a decade commuting between Manhattan and upstate New York. (He retired that car with 200,000+ miles.) Both of us hate the idea of having to drive every day, to do things like grocery shopping.
So we are delighted to discover that in the Scandinavian capitals, we have no need for a car. The public transportation in Oslo, Stockholm, and Helsinki is first-rate. Each of the cities has buses, trams, a metro, and (of course) inter-city trains. The city transportation runs frequently, has bright and shiny cars, and covers pretty much the whole city, and its suburbs. The cost for a trip within the city is about what you pay for a subway ride in NYC ($2.75). There are discounts and monthly passes, and pensioners (who comprise 50% of us!) also get a discount.
They all use the European system, i.e., you buy a ticket beforehand and you then validate it on board. It’s a time stamp, and your ticket is good for a certain period (anywhere from 60 to 100 minutes). The driver doesn’t have to deal with money. And this speeds things up, since s/he only has to attend to the actual driving. Ticket-checkers regularly get on board at which point you have to show your ticket. We heard that there weren’t that many of these, but we get checked nearly every time. Maybe it’s our suspicious faces…
Since the whole thing is based on the honour system, the cost of traveling without a ticket is (deliberately) pretty steep. In Oslo, it’s $115 ($95 if you pay on the spot); in Stockholm it’s $150, and, to add insult to injury, you have to also pay for the cost of the ticket; in Helsinki, it’s a mere $80 (everything is cheaper there!). A Norwegian friend told us that in earlier days, they would publish the names of scofflaws in the newspaper as a way of shaming them – and everyone read that section of the paper avidly. Alas, for the good old days when people could feel shame.
The whole thing functions through apps, with which you can buy and validate your ticket without ever needing a machine. The same company, Vy, covers both Norway and Sweden, and Finland’s works through HSL. With the phone app, you just show the QR code on your phone to the checker. We notice that this is now the same way on longer-distance trains. (And internet privacy laws in Europe are such that we’re willing to download random apps.)
The mode that John (the one with the train crush) loves above all is the tram. It combines the convenience of a bus with the feeling that you’re riding on a train. Fortunately, there have been trams galore in each of the three cities, so he gets to indulge his train fantasy on a regular basis. He is looking forward to the trams in Istanbul!
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