jamesbrownontheroad

I never had cause to take taxis in Sweden, mainly because I live rurally and none will ever come out our way.

One aspect of taxi deregulation and consolidation I don’t appreciate is that our local town (pop. 4,000) lost its last local taxi service when the municipality awarded school transport contracts to a company in Umeå. That company had been bought out by one the national operators. Of course they were cheaper so they won the bid. But now all their cars do a 100km roundtrip just to start their school runs. And we don’t have any local taxi service for those emergencies or occasions when you need them. The weighting of these public contracts ignores social benefit and goes straight for the lowest bid.

GUWonder

The government contracts for taxis to be used for school kids in Sweden can indeed make or break taxi companies/drivers. Even in Sweden’s second and third biggest cities, it was make or break without all of that school taxi business. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that Gothenburg court ruling about assigning kids to school may have even increased the proportion of school kids in Sweden entitled to a school bus ride or school taxi service to get to and from school.

FlyingMoose

I see the opposite, most distances are to great for bicycles or the infrastructure to use them isn't there. The fact you can effectively have no alcohol and drive makes using your own car not an option and especially in Stockholm, the cost of parking very quickly outweighs the cost of an Uber or Bolt. I fully agree that people really do not trust regular taxis and this is why Uber is so successful because it preempts most/all of the classic taxi scams. You know the price upfront, you can always pay with creditcard (including amex), you can share your location so your friends or relatives know where you are etc. The safety of public transport declines very rapidly in the later hours, very subject to direction.

It is completely absurd this system even exists. If you live rural and decide to have children you should be able to and have the means to get them to school. Making that the tax payer's problem is mind blowing. I would argue that with Sweden's 10% or close to it unemployment rate, there is ample opportunity for the rural areas to have Uber drivers as well.

GUWonder

Just about everyone is a taxpayer, especially in Sweden where there is VAT with most of what is purchased locally by consumers. So the family food spenders in rural Sweden are getting a bit of a rebate this way without adding to the housing market inflation issues in the more “central” neighborhoods of the regions/municipalities.

Many of the farm kids in rural America also get school bus service, and they certainly did make use of it a lot around me except amusingly enough during deer hunting season which is when they would be less likely to use the school bus service than get a ride in with a private/commercial vehicle. Mandatory school, mandatory for responsible governments to facilitate school accessibility. Just like in Sweden, so in the US: small rural schools got shutdown for financial and demographic reasons and instead larger more consolidated schools popped up necessitating longer school trips for many a farmer’s kid than for the farmer.

I enjoy seeing the old school buildings that go up for sale in Sweden, but converting them into residential properties seems like an expensive and time consuming mess and perhaps an invitation to high operating and maintenance costs.

Speaking of real property, should we expect to see SAS sell off or otherwise surrender property space around Sweden as things shift to Denmark over time?

jamesbrownontheroad

One of the journalists at the media event at Frösundavik on 3rd October asked Anko and his co-presenter (forget his name, from the board?) about the future relocation of the HQ to Denmark. Anko said the usual polite thing... you can take Sweden out of SAS but you can't take SAS out of Sweden (or something like that). His co-presenter simply said "I don't care, but I would like a HQ that's close to an airport."

barbro66

Random lounge access question here. I'm flying into Stockholm on SAS, and then out 6 hours later on AY. Since I'm EB gold not diamond I guess I don't have any chance of lounge access for those 6 hours? Could I buy a cheap flight with miles to get access? What would happen if I canceled the ticket after I got into the lounge? The 25 euros cancellation fee sounds fine to me for 6 hours in the lounge...

intuition

Your profile says "Finnair Emerald " so you have lounge access based on that.

barbro66

But just got downgraded :-(

Jainzar

Also AY Gold has lounge access.

To my understanding you need to cancel the award 24 hours before departure. Otherwise points will be lost. So I doubt your plan will work.

Another alternative is to upgrade your hop from ARN.

FlyingMoose

If you have an AMEX Platinum or Centurion card you can also use the AMEX lounge.

SK2751

A small correction: From what I remember, they did not ban Uber (as they did not ban Ryanair). They just required that Uber (and Ryanair) operate withing the existing labour and tax laws. The companies left out of their own will ...

GUWonder

[email protected] seems to be processing status match requests. Worked for BA elites who fly out of CPH. Seems now also for some others.

I would suggest being careful with timing if already having *G status. But if not taking the opportunity now, who knows how long it will remain or when exactly they will open the door again as part of transitioning to SkyTeam.

nacho

Only for OW elites based in CPH?

GUWonder

They’ve also matched AF/KL elite status, and that is surprising to me at this point. Wouldn’t be surprised if they may be open to picking up LH elites too.

CPH-Flyer

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According to a mail I saw, Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian are on the matching list.