highupinthesky

I'm 100% with your here.

I think this was changed a couple of months ago, when the new Metro line was opened in Copenhagen and they implemented the quality add-on fee for using the Metro.

highupinthesky

Because this is in Denmark and we can do everything better than anyone else. On top of what you wrote, the system was delayed by at least 10 years, and I don't think there is an app yet.

CPH-Flyer

You can still maintain complex fare structures with simple and solid technology backbones. The absurdity of Rejsekortet is driven by complex fare structures and a poor technical solution. The inability to calculate with a monthly commuter pass in the picture just shows that the technology is just not good enough. The time it takes to read the card is another indication of a poor solution.

But I guess creating a new semi public company to create Rejsekortet kept a lot of former DSB people in comfy high paid jobs.

highupinthesky

You are looking at it from the wrong angle.
A off the shelf ticketing system should consist of 2 components.

1. The travel module, where you have the app's, cards or what ever you use to register your journey
2. The ticketing module which calculate the price of your journey. This can be made using standard rule base decision engines. Three are way more complex rule base engines in use than what is needed for a public transport rule base.

GUWonder

Easier said than done, especially when the fare structures, pricing and transport services aren’t left static, the zoning arrangements aren’t geographically uniform across implemented OTS systems, and when all of this comes with complex, even convoluted historical baggage and future baggage too. In theory from an ivory tower, a lot of things can be done. In the real world, these changes turn out to be more expensive in various ways, and the paying mass transit users and subsidizing-taxpayers are left with different versions of expensive absurdity whether the system change is an off-the-shelf overlay, heavily farmed out or heavily internally-retained. And as this is public mass transit we are talking about, accountability for blunders on an individual basis in this area is generally very poor — and usually no better in the world of the revolving door in this region with a lot of cronyism and borderline nepotistic practices when it comes to the intersection of business and government in these cozy environments.

nacho

Yes - it is, and those idiots who designed the metro are just ......

DOT hired Hong Kong Octopus company to do the rejsekort project, I don't know if anything is not delayed in Europe...... I don't know if an app is any good as the developers have to set permission so that people don't have the "Danish" store access could download it. I really don't like they have an app for everything, I don't have that many apps and I just updated 18 apps Friday and today my Android phone is showing 15 updates available!

In Skane you can use your credit card to pay on buses but right now the cash price for a short bus ride inside Lund is 25 SEK, I don't know what extra fees they will add if you use a credit card to pay.

CPH-Flyer

Yes we can. Look at the brilliant custom solutions for trains that DSB came up with instead of buying reasonably standard solutions. Though most of them worked out reasonably well eventually.

GUWonder

They still take cash on the buses in Lund? I thought the green and even yellow Skĺnetrafiken buses banned cash purchase of tickets on the buses.

A short bus ride in Malmo is now 27 SEK. Same 27 SEK for a short bus ride in Lund. With Jojo, these were 22.5 SEK on Friday. Now they are 27 SEK in the post-Jojo era. And tickets that used to allow for 75 minutes of travel for the price of the cheapest tickets now allow only 60 minutes of travel. This is a messy disaster for those who do inter-model, off-peak travel with Skĺnetrafiken from the outskirts within the high tax municipalities, for it doesn’t take much for a scheduled 30-40 minute journey to become a 60-80 minute journey given the variable reliability of the services for those who are already largely incentivized to drive rather than to use public transit.

Pay more, get less (of everything but hassles or confused looks). Welcome to Scandinavia.

nacho

WTH?! 27SEK now? ! It was a friend who told me how expensive it was to take a bus for 2 stops - my friend gave up and leased a car and drive (the bus route system is not really benefiting people in her area because all buses in Lund go towards Lund C, so if she takes a bus close to her home she has to change at Lund C. If she walks 10 minutes to Dalbyv. she can take a yellow bus that bring her closer to the school which is a max 10 minutes ride. No matter which route she takes the price is the same).

I think the buses are all cashless now - the info I got was like 2 years ago (that's why the price was ONLY 25 SEK)- I just wanted to say how crazy the price was back then. The most crazy thing is that city public transport should be cheap because no city wants cars in them, they ought to have discounted prices for city buses.

Malmo is trying stop people from driving - good luck in finding free parking spot in Limhamn (they removed half of the free spot close to the beach to put recycling containers there), and an ICA manager asked me where I was going when I parked the car to go to ICA (the shops have free parking without validation so they are paranoid about people taking advantage of their parking). Bunkeflostrand has only 1 road out to the area to the main road that connects to Malmo - put it narrow with 40km/h and full of speed bumps! As you know those areas are not poor areas so people of course are driving (Bunkeflostrand is pretty far from Malmo).

Malmo stad also removed free parking close to Pildammparken - I guess they want people pay to park to enjoy a park. Fortunately I don't have to go there anymore. Oh btw there's a demonstration against budget cut for schools next year at the Stadhus tomorrow as Malmo stad wants to cut 50M SEK in schools next year.

We will try to get out of Scandinavia after the kids are off to university.

GUWonder

Like with too many things in the world, the authorities behave in confused and confusing ways or simply messed up ways. Malmo Stad has tried to convert Svagertorp station area into a cheap parking lot for commuters to Malmo Stad but has an addiction to parking spot revenue everywhere else and converts free parking areas to paid parking areas, which consequently are underutilized and push problems elsewhere in terms of parking and traffic.

I still easily find free parking around Bunkeflostrand, but it's on the residential streets with free standing or chain houses. But some of the home owners do get worked up over strangers' cars parking on the street even as it's completely legal to do so in the way I can do. Limhamn is a hassle to find free parking, but I can usually find some on the streets at least on weekends.

To drive from most of the house areas in Bunkeflo to most of the places of relevance in Malmo, it is usually about 20 minutes IME; but if taking the bus and train and maybe another bus, it can be anything from 20+ minutes to 60 minutes or even worse at times. So when it comes to the people who can drive, they do of course drive way more than would be otherwise required. And part of that increased driving/car use is that the public transport system is not so reliable and is subject to price hikes and hassles that hit such people directly more than others. And it seems like the higher income earners or their employers may be better off with employer-provided parking rather than with a salary increase for such employees living in these areas. And so the net result of all of this is what? The high income earners use Skanetrafiken less than they would otherwise do so and they drive more ... despite the governments attempt to try to convince people to drive less ... including in ways that sometimes actually encourage them to drive more. And the people most committed to using public transit and the resources to choose alternatives question why they should stick with Skanetrafiken.

Sadly, it can at times be faster to take an electric scooter from Bunkeflo to parts of central Malmo than it is to use the buses and trains.

School budget cuts in Malmo just mean the people who can afford it most will send off their kids to schools in Vellinge. And the more qualified Malmo teachers with a willingness and ability to be footloose will continue to move out to schools in Vellinge and elsewhere for various reasons. And the people left behind will be made to fall further behind. Talk about making a great future for its average and least capable students and society at large.

highupinthesky

Google is better at calculating the fare price than Rejsekortet, so I don't buy this. Calculating fare prices can be done using rule engines. You don't need a higher degree in mathematics or sophisticated BI systems for this.

Often there is a simple solution to almost any kind of problem. Years back when IT was in it's child hood for car rental, I had a friend who owed a car rental company with about 100 cars. He wanted to go online and let people pick the cars them self, but had a great problem with how to deal with maintenance, late return of cars etc. His view was that every car was unique and when a client booked a car, he should get that specific car he booked. In reality he had 3 types of cars, and less than 2 weeks after he understood that clients should not pick a specific car but a type of cars his online booking systems went live.

The issues is more or less the same with the public transport ticketing system in DK. The guys who claim it's to complex for a computer to calculate a correct fare has lost the overview, and can't see the woods because of all the trees. (DK saying, which is probably better in Danish than my poor translation)

nacho

I have no idea about schools in Vellinge (not sure if the schools there allow kids who don't reside in the kommun), I know some parents from the kids' previous school are thinking about doing that because the prestige international school becomes so bad now. I have no idea how exactly the skolpeng works - from what I know a school will get $ from the home kommun to the school (that's why a school in Lund advises everyone to live inside Lund so that they get the extra $ as Lund pays more to international schools). If that's the case then no school would want to accept kids from Malmo.

Have you seen the queue from Bunklostrand going towards Malmo in the morning? That road leads to a roundabout where it's typically a chaos - the roundabout by the inner-ring road close to Emporia has accidents like every 2 weeks or so because I think Swedes learn different system when entering and driving in a roundabout (M Sverige is trying to change that and states very clearly that only one way is correct, however I saw learner entering the roundabout and driving in it using the old system).

I guess the rental page on facebook will be a lot more prosperous and some might use it to earn some extra $.

Tell me why on earth do they leave Svagertorp empty, I think the park and ride there was amazing and Mr. used to use it and pay like 450/month. I think a park and ride pass is over 1000 in Hyllie.

highupinthesky

Well one thing is the IT systems another is the policy and management view in Rejsekortet. Rejsekortet has never been designed for anyone who don't have a DK social security number and a DK bank account. If you are a tourist in DK and buy Rejsekortet, it's impossible for you to get the balance refunded when you leave the country again. This is not down to poor IT system, but poor business processes.
The only other place in the world where they have a similar stupid system is Sydney, or maybe it was Melbourne. Either way down there, you can enter the public transportation as long as the balance isn't negative on your travel card, and you can exit despite it being negative, so plan it right at you have an almost free ride to the airport on you way home. They don't require any ID when you purchase the travel card, so there is no way they can find you.

I don't like all the app's either. In my view a web browser is often a better choice for a lot of the stuff companies try to push into an app. A few thing like boarding cards etc. are good to have in the app, but why can't the airlines agree on a common check-in systems, so I only need one app, instead of one per airline. I got 5 different airline app's at the moment and it's only because I've deleted the airline app's I haven't used in more than 2 years, and the LH app cover the whole LH group.

GUWonder

The schools in Vellinge have some of the highest test results of all schools in Sweden. I guess a big part of that is the socio-economic demographic background of the parents and the games played to keep out "outsiders" and their kids.

Some Malmo residents have their teenage kids going to Vellinge for school. I know lots of schools claim that there is a backlog for even the most local of local residents, but some people seem to manage to get what they want regardless.

Do you mean the north-south Klagshamnsvagen road from near the ICA Bunkeflostrand Centrum that goes toward Limhamn, or do you mean the road that goes from near ICA Bunekflostrand Centrum toward the BurgerKing/CircleK roundabout for highway use? I am assuming the latter since you mention the inner ring road (which I usually call a highway of sort). I think all of those roundabouts along that stretch from near Bunkeflo ICA to the Burger King/Circle K have a lot of messed up action. Fortunately, at least the bus drivers seem to be predictable in this regard if nothing else.

I can't figure out what the people in the roundabouts are going to do, as it seems like the use of the car's left-right turn signal indicators are inconsistent and even positioning in the double circle roundabouts doesn't mean very much as consistently as it should. And yes, even the people in those cars labeled with traffic school or training driver signs seem to not be consistent with themselves.

.... I am just glad that commercial plane pilots are more consistent than "experienced" drivers in Sweden, especially as I cover more miles in planes than in cars.

nacho

The one by OK/burger king - I used to go to the recycling centre there to dump off things after dropping off the kids - that road is the only way that gives you access to Bunkeflostrand. I drove there to drop off my kid for a play date and I was thinking how lucky I'm that I don't have to drive on this road daily. Think about all the villas/apartments and each one has a car and are going out at the same time?

Regarding the roundabout - basically I have seen countless ways of doing it. It's a lot simpler in Denmark - they are using the way that M Sverige wrote in their magazine, i.e. signal only when you exit. As far as I know Sweden used to have the same system as the UK regarding roundabout driving (so they signal to the left when they enter and then right when they exit) - the worst is that they don't even follow that. The problem is that they introduced the one where you only signal when you get out - and to make things worse, the ones who are in the roundabout think that they don't have to stick to their lane, and at the same time, a lot of people either don't look or think that they are on the right of the cars from the roundabout, so they just go ahead and drive in without looking. If a roundabout has one lane, then there's only the latter problem), but when there are 2 lanes (in the roundabout and on the exits) like the one connecting to inner ring road then there is a huge problem.

Flying is a lot simpler - they are told where to go.