How the transports work

Hejsa!

The bus I normally ride

Today I will speak about how transports are like here! First, I will speak about the busses, then trains, cars, bicycles and, lastly, walking. On one of the last posts, I talked about the school, and that I always take a bus there. Here the local traffic companies (trafikselskaber) are responsible for the busses, and here it is called Sydtrafik. Each region has a different one, and this influences on how the busses look like, on prices and some other things. There are three ways to pay for your trip: buying it in the bus, using a Rejsekort or showing your Ungdomskort. But what are those?

Rejsekort: a prepaid card that can be used countrywide, both on trains and busses, and it gives you some discount over the normal ticket, according to the kind of card you have.

Ungdomskort: that's the one I have. It is a card which you pay 12 DKK (US$1,80 or 1,60€) per day to be able to travel without limits inside a certain area. So, if you want to visit your friend, and he/she lives in the same area as you, then you can visit he/she for free! And there’s more: to go to any other zone in the whole country, there’s a 50% discount on the ticket! (Update in Sep 2018: apparently, it doesn't work like that anymore; instead, everyone that fits in the "Ung" category = 16 to 25 year olds, get a 25% discount over the normal price, and the Ungdomskort is not anymore needed to get that discount, that applied to DSB's trains).

A good thing is that the busses are not normally delayed, and always follow their path; also, there’s an app called Rejseplanen, that has data of every bus and train the whole country; it is literally a saviour when you want to get back home or travel somewhere!

Apart from the busses, there are also trains, as mentioned before; there are railways all over the country and it’s possible to travel between every medium or large town using them without hassle. There are currently five train types running in Denmark, most operated by DSB, the former state-owned rail company and the largest one in the country. They are:

• InterCity, that runs between major cities and stops at every station.
• InterCityLyn, that’s like the first but stops less.
• Regional, which runs slowly, stops at every station and has less comfort.
• S-tog, the regional train at Copenhagen metro area.
• Finally, the trains operated by Arriva, a German train company.

Train routes in Denmark

It’s worth noting that, even that having a car here is expensive (the registration tax is up to 180% of its value and gas costs US$5,63 per gallon/1,34€ per litre), many people still buy and maintain cars and use them to commute, travel and even to come to school, because of how convenient it is and for them not to depend on trains, busses and bicycles. Because of that, many works like the Vejlefjord bridge were made and widened to bear the growing traffic of cars and trucks here.

The Lillebæltsbroen, linking Fredericia in Jutland with Middelfart in Funen.

We can’t forget about bicycles! Denmark, together with the Netherlands, are famous for their extensive use of bicycles and for making the necessary infrastructure for their good use. Here, many main roads have a special bicycle track parallel to them, and almost every main road on a city has a bike lane on the side. Many people use them to go to work or school, and in Copenhagen, almost half of the commuters in the city use the bike, 45% to be more exact.

The bicycle I use (with autumn on the background)

Rush hour in Copenhagen

Lastly, but not less important, here is very common to walk to places, not just small distances (less than a km/0,6mi). This may be one of the reasons why every medium to large sized city here has their main shopping point on a walking street, or gågade in Danish. It is there or around it that many things happen and where it’s possible to but a large array of stuff, like food (there’s always a market), clothes, personal items, and some others, and normally every gågade has a set of stores that are present in every city, maybe because of coincidence or because they like to be in the middle of everything!

I hope it was a good and informing article of how people get around in here :)

Vi ses!