Thousands of passengers to pay more on the train from Sunday

Vy employees bus for trainPhoto: Vy/Mads Kristiansen

When Go-Ahead takes over traffic on the Sørlandsbanen on December 15, nearly 80,000 students will lose the right to a discount while mini-price tickets can be twice as expensive.

Today, passengers can buy one mini-fare ticket but from Sunday, train passengers may have to buy tickets from both Vy and Go-Ahead on routes where one could previously travel with one discounted ticket.

According to Transport Minister Jon Georg Dale (Frp), 8 percent of all travellers on the Sørlandsbanen combine the trip with a journey on other rail routes but it is not known how many people buy mini-fare tickets. Vy, which carries passengers there today said they are putting out thousands of mini-fare tickets a month for the Sørlandsbanen, according to Dagsavisen.

“As soon as we get started and have historical data, we can enter into a dialogue with Vy and SJ and see if we can come up with a solution,” CEO Cathrine Elgin of Go-Ahead previously told NRK about that it can be twice as expensive for some to travel.

When it comes to the student discount, however, there are new rules. Go-ahead has set a new age limit, removing the 25 per cent discount for students who are 30 years or older. There are 78,766 students in this age group in Norway this year, according to the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. Elgin told Dagsavisen that they will not be able to be an “eternal student” on the train but pointed out that they will also extend the discount to younger students.

© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today

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