Saturday, January 10, 2015

Newer Transportation Systems

I'd posted last spring about big changes underway for the public transportation system we use to get out to Aspö.

We used to be able to buy a paper strip for use on the buses and subways. That was replaced last year with an Access card, much like the Oyster card in London, or, really, contactless transit cards in most every major city these days.

One owns the card and then simply stores money on the card, which is deducted on each journey. (A snag for us as non-Swedes is that we can't do the refilling of money online, we have to do it in person at a ticket office. But I digress).

The boat part of our journey has been through a Waxholmbolaget stored-value card. The benefit of that card is we have received a 25% discount. By paying 750 kroner, the card's been filled with 1000kr worth of seafaring value. Sweet!

There's been confusion about when and if the boats will start using the access card. I was told in October at our last visit that the Waxholms card would be used for the summer of 2015 as there were still issues being worked out.

That's changing, though. The Skärgården newspaper reports (English here) that the Waxholms card will be phased out by Easter. However, the good news is that my leftover value on my old card can be transferred over. Even better, the prepay discount remains!

For now, the funds for boat and bus/train journeys are separate on the card. However, I can foresee the day when a Stavsnäs-Aspö trip will be one ticket, and one fare, which should make things simpler and perhaps cheaper as well.

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