HSL indirectly increases ticket prices

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

According to the news, the most popular point of sale for HSL tickets (the R-kioski chain) will start to take a commission for loading travel cards. Travel cards are the RFID cards that you need to use Helsinki public transport.However, in reality, this is a hidden price increase, because HSL decided in 2019 that they will stop paying their distribution partners a fee for their service of loading the travel card. No commercial enterprise can offer services for free, hence this is an indirect price jump initiated by HSL.According to changes mandated by the law, HSL had to start competing the sales of their tickets. However, in their call for tender, HSL announced from now on not to pay any commission to any of their distribution partners. This was entirely their own decision, and hence, it is justified to regard it as a covert but deliberate price increase. Besides, there is not much information about these service fees. I could neither find any specific service fee lists from the S-group nor from the K-group. Only R-kioski’s information was easy to find and concise: R-kioski: kausi: 3.5% of ticket price, max. 5 €; arvolippu: 1€/kpl, kertalippu/vuorokuasilippu 3€ 40 cents.The K-group (K-citymarket, K-market) had announced that the fees would range between 0.5-2€, but still, as of today, I could not find more specific information. I even contacted the S-group, but - typically for such companies - they take their time. I would be surprised to get a reply within a week. Considering the big picture, the negative aspect of making environmentally-friendly transport more expensive is dominating the small improvement of increasing the amount of POS for HSL tickets.Read about it in Finnish in Helsingin Sanomat: https://www.hs.fi/kaupunki/art-2000006355404.htmlRead about it in English on the HSL pages; https://www.hsl.fi/en/news/2019/hsls-ticket-sales-network-set-expand-beginning-next-year-18242UPDATE (01.07.2020): Meanwhile the number of HSL-operated ticket vending machines has increased. These machines support topping off the balance of your travel card WITHOUT taking a commission. Additionally, you can also now (something that had been promised for years) top off your balance online . The system has still lots of bugs (according to HSL still about 1% of transactions fail), but hopefully HSL will work out these kinks over the next few decades.

No quantum leap towards a car-free city

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The public transport company of the Finland’s capital region (HSL) has moved to a new fare system . The system was previously based on the city borders. This was unjust: A one-kilometre trip cost you more than 4 Euros if it happened to cross a city border while a 20-km trip (e.g. from Lauttasaari to Vuosaari) might have been only 2.2 €. Now the capital region is divided into concentric zones around the city center of Helsinki and the fare is determined which and how many zones you are entering during the trip. The trips are paid with an electronic travel card, which can be loaded with “time” (weekly, monthly or seasonal ticket) or “value” (to pay individual journeys).Insignificantly cheaper for most, but not allThe implied promise was that the system does not get more expensive, but this is obviously not true for everybody. For those people that use single tickets, the rise is noticeable. The price of a single ticket within the AB zone rose from 2.2€ to 2.8€ which is more than 27%. On the other hand the ticket is now valid for 80 minutes (instead of 60 minutes) and the region that can be travelled with the new ticket has expanded (mostly into the Western direction to Espoo). However these additional improvements are relevant only for a limited number of customers since the bulk amount of journeys stay within 60 minutes and within the Helsinki area of the AB zone. Moreover, the single tram-only tickets have been abolished. These tram tickets were much cheaper then the regular tickets that entitle you to ride any type of public transport. There are several media stories about the loosers of the ticket reform in the Finnish press, e.g. at Talouselämä: https://www.talouselama.fi/uutiset/hsln-lippu-uudistuksen-haviajat-ratikkamatkustajat-kolmannen-vyohykkeen-kautta-kulkevat-ja-vain-helsingissa-matkustavat/703ca51a-c6b8-3b71-9804-9f35ad89eeaa . PromisesMy own public transport expenses have been sharply rising (by about 25%) as I primarily used single tickets within the Helsinki part of the AB zone. This wouldn’t be a big issue if HSL had kept its promise to offer a substantial discount on users that keep the auto-renewing subscription ticket valid for a year or longer. However, I cannot even find this promise any more on the HSL website. When I asked the customer support of HSL, they told me that they are working on the implementation of such a discount, but they cannot say when it will be ready. This reminded me of the previous fare system update, when HSL promised to introduce a supplementary ticket for owners of monthly tickets valid within Helsinki in order to extend its range without the need to buy a full-price ticket for the whole greater Helsinki Region (“seutulippu”).No quantum leap towards a car-free cityWhile overall perhaps a tiny step into the right direction, the fare-system renewal is far from an attractive offer for car drivers to become public transport users. Much more courage and bigger steps are needed if Helsinki seriously wants to make private car ownership pointless by 2025 . For families with children living in the C zone, the car is even financially still too competitive compared to public transport (ABC ticket for 2 adults & 2 children for one year: ~3500€).

HSL on Michael’s Domain

HSL indirectly increases ticket prices

No quantum leap towards a car-free city