johan rebel

That should not really surprise anybody.

Sweden is a country where the right to take vacation takes precedence over any obligation to provide public services to the tax payer, including essential 24/7 ones. That's why there's hardly a traffic cop to be found on the roads when summer vacation traffic reaches it peak; half the precinct stations more or less close so half the cops can talk half the summer off; hospitals close entire wards for the same reason; and fire departments hire lots of summer temps who can't tell a hose from a rubber band.

Johan

GUWonder

It will be interesting to see what happens to those Swedish citizens under 16 and/or 18 years of age who try to take the train from CPH to Sweden without ID. If the train operator and/or private sector contractor refuses to accept that a Swedish citizen of minor age is a minor without ID in hand, then what?

tanja

That would be my grand daugther who is 9. She has no ID what so ever.But she likes to pick up grandmom.

GUWonder

But the odds of a 9 year old girl being misperceived as being 18 years of age or older is rather low. So your grand-daughter should still be able to get by from CPH to Sweden by rail as long as she is in the company of an admissible adult with ID.

But a 17-year-old boy may have higher odds of being misperceived as being 18 years of age or older and subject to ID verification of their own.

tanja

I have heard that Sweden does not know what to do with minors. She would be with her dad and me. Plus she has blonde hair and blue eyes and she speaks swedish.

GUWonder

Then she would be fine if her accompanying adults had ID.

Next week, some changes come into play:

DSB (Danish rail) and its contractors start carrying out the checks from next Monday on Track 1 at CPH. There are supposed to be 5 control areas with up to 34 ID control gates.

Passmethesickbag

Tip to lone refugee children: Get a blond wig and an adult to accompany you.

GUWonder

On January 4th or shortly thereafter, I may cross by rail from Denmark to Sweden with my own US passport and travel with a very young relative who meets all of the following conditions at the same time: a citizen of at least one NPU country; only speaks English to me; doesn't have blond hair; and doesn't carry ID when already in an NPU country and only visiting or residing in an NPU country during my time there.

Given much of the "human trafficking" of minor children from Denmark to Sweden has apparently been done with the consent of the custodial parents/guardians of the children and been performed by family/friends of the custodial parents/guardians of such children, it would probably work even without trying to do an ethnic profile adjustment as long as the accompanying adult had acceptable ID and could plausibly claim to have a minor child of their own in that supposed age range and had a supposedly akin ethnic appearance with that of the child.

For adopted, minor children and non-adopted, minor children of biological parents with rather different ethnic background mixes than the accompanying adult, who knows what the dynamic will be without ID. Get in line and ask a "random" adult to claim to be traveling together? That would probably work too to get around the ID check at CPH. Are they also going to not only scan/store ID images but also photograph minors and their supposedly accompanying adult?

There seems to be a risk that what is going to go on at CPH is just a game where the rules seem to be made up as they go along. Now, I'm just waiting how much higher than a 10% fare hike I'm looking at when it comes to CPH-Sweden/Sweden-CPH bridge crossings.

GUWonder

Reuters article on the changes for train traffic:

http://www.trust.org/item/20151229153102-431tc

FredAnderssen

What an unmitigated disaster. I've flown through CPH dozens of times and taken the train into Sweden, only to be met by trains overflowing with passengers, even during times not considered to be rush-hour. Once, I had to scoop a child who was hanging half-way out of the train door so that it could close, as we all stood packed like sardines in the aisles and entrances to the the train.

Now they want to funnel the passengers (from all over Denmark, no less!) up the moving walkways into the main terminal just so they can then funnel them back down into the train station? Talk about a logistical nightmare!

Have you ever stood in Terminal 1 at CPH at almost ANY time of the day and been able to push your way through the crowds to get to the ticket counters for the trains without being jostled around like a ship in a storm? Now the powers that be want to add a crushing throng of passengers from Copenhagen Central on top of this? Are they insane?

I, for one, have already checked out Gothenburg (GOT) airport's parking schedule. It will double my costs to not be able to take the train to the airport as there is no direct route from where I am now to GOT. Now I will need to drive to the airport and park my car (Lot P7 being the most reasonable). No matter how you slice it, the cost, time, and convenience of traveling to and from Sweden will be aversely affected.

Still, anything will be better, and any costs will be palatable compared to the categorical disaster which will be Kastrup.

Passmethesickbag

This decision comes from Stockholm, of course, with no consideration whatsoever for the regions (or indeed for the Danes). Unfortunately, the cross-country train schedule from Gothenburg has been gutted, and I don't have a car in Sweden anymore. But I'll be considering the options of terminating at ARN, or connecting into LPI or KLR for my next trip. I might book an open jaw and *leave* out of CPH.

GUWonder

Cross-border open jaw tickets can be a major money saver for air travel. Sometime it's part of a fuel-surcharge dumping strategy.

More seriously, I'm not looking forward to what this is going to do to my cross border trips from CPH to Sweden. I may just end up staying in Denmark way more often than I would otherwise do.

FredAnderssen

Talk about closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted on the part of the Swedes. I live in Sweden and have seen this disaster in the making as if it were a proverbial slow-motion train wreck.

Simple third-grade arithmetic would tell the powers-that-be at an early date that if you have 100,000 beds and a projected 190,000 immigrants, that it isn't possible to have NEGATIVE 90,000 beds for those that come here. Not to mention that some 40 percent aren't even krigsflyktingar (refugees of war) but ekonomiska migranter (monetary immigrants).

Now, the provinces of Skåne and Blekinge will suffer greatly at the hands of this incompetence, as commute times for those working in Copenhagen will increase by at least thirty minutes and projected to be as much as an hour.

Then there are those in Copenhagen and other parts of Denmark who make daily commutes to Malmö by train, only to be funneled into the Tivoli of CPH airport.

The amount of money lost by this ill thought-out system will be staggering.

johan rebel

But they don't want to listen. Their overriding concern is to avoid an election that would give the one and only opposition party even more seats in Riksdagen. In this endeavor the most inept government in living memory is aided and abetted by the parties of the former alliance, who have shown an astounding willingness to compromise their principles and abandon their policies.

Third-grade arithmetic is not something Swedish media get either. Last week TV reported a year-on-year increase in human traffic cases from 14 to 98. An accompanying bar graph was labeled "+700%". Yeah, right!

Johan

Passmethesickbag

OK boys, this thread has now drifted back firmly into OMNI territory. Let's just agree that the Swedish government has successively alienated first those who favoured a restrictive refugee policy, then those who favoured a generous refugee policy, and now everybody who needs to travel between CPH and Sweden for travel or commuting purposes.