Oslo's public transport is unfriendly to foreigners Sun, 07 Jul 2024 Travel, Opinion =================================================== I have been living in Oslo for the past two years and there are many good things I can say about the city. It is generally clean, the people will largely not bother you, and it has great access to many nature areas for recreation. These nature areas are best reached by the public transport system which is largely excellent. There are no gates, no complicated ticket types, subscriptions, and discounts, the metro, bus, and tram drive rather frequently, and you can even take the ferry with the same card. There are however also many, many aspects of Oslo's public transport which rub me the wrong way. Instead of just listing my issues with the system however, I will highlight specifically why these matters are particularly detrimental to foreigners. 1. Tickets ---------- Oslo's public transport network does not have ticket machines. Instead, tickets are can be bought at various kiosks from four particular chains, or at the half a dozen official outlets. This is a huge problem for foreigners coming into the city for several reasons. Firstly, it is confusing. Ticket machines are rather universal across Europe and most of the world. My process of visiting cities is simple. I go to the train or metro stop, buy a day pass, check out the map, and get on the next available train. In Oslo, you show up to the metro and see... well nothing. There is a small sign at most stops describing to you where you can buy tickets (only in Norwegian and English), though there is no map nor written instructions of the closest outlet. If you don't know the city well, you might need to walk around for quite some time before finding one of these stores. This leads into my second point. The ticket sale locations are not distributed uniformly across the city. In fact, you don't even need to go very far outside of the commercial center before you are in a ticket-dead-zone. There are many places within the city where you need to walk at least an hour before encountering a point of sale, even assuming you take the shortest route. At this point I should mention that there is an alternative: a mobile app. While it is great that you *can* use a mobile app instead of a physical ticket, it does not alleviate the problems listed above. You cannot assume that your passengers have mobile data plans to download and use the app (yes, you need an active internet connection in case of a ticket inspection, and there are no mobile hotspots on board the vehicles nor at the stations), you cannot assume that everyone has a smartphone with either google play or the apple app store, nor for that matter can you assume that all of your users have a credit card using either Visa or MasterCard to pay for these tickets. While all these elements are nigh-universal amongst the Norwegians, they are not universal worldwide, therefore placing a greater burden on tourists and other foreigners. 2. Times -------- The Oslo public transport system is very spotty when it comes to service after midnight. The metro and tram lines stop entirely around 1, and the regular buses switch to night buses. These night buses operate on different lines, with different times, and are usually overcrowded with drunk Norwegian partygoers. This is of course especially problematic if you are making your way to or from the airport, placing yet another increased burden on tourists. 3. Where am I going again? -------------------------- All stations and stops for the bus, train, tram, and metro use recognizable enough Norwegian names. These are rather well diminishable from another in most cases. There are however some major accessibility concerns. Firstly, the displays showing the coming stops are very frequently broken, especially on the buses. This is a problem because you need to request the driver to stop at the next station by pressing a button for both the bus and the tram. If you do not know what the next stop is (because you are unfamiliar with the city), this obviously becomes more difficult. The name of the next stop is also called out by over a speaker, however this system also has two problems. Firstly, and most obviously, those who are hard of hearing will have no idea where they are when the screens are non-functional (or if they also have poor vision). Secondly, for those not used to the Norwegian language, it can be very hard to put the sounds to words. Add to that the fact that there are plenty of people who did not grow up with the Latin alphabet, nor even a Germanic language, and you are -- once again -- putting an extra burden on foreigners. 4. Inconsistency and information sharing ---------------------------------------- It happens relatively often that the public transport network shuts down, most often due to weather conditions. This is perhaps unavoidable, but what makes this problematic is the sharing of information in such events. Firstly, the information is often not updated. Rather, the next train will just be pushed back 10 minutes with every 10 minutes that pass. Locals have figured out by experience how to tell when a train is likely never arriving, but for tourists and immigrants, this is not the case. Secondly, smaller stations will usually have a display simply reading: ``check our website for updates''. I mentioned above that you cannot assume everyone to be in the possession of a smartphone and an active internet connection. Bigger stations tend to have spoken announcements about the state of things, though these are only given in Norwegian. And even if you manage to translate these messages, they usually only state something along the lines of ``look for alternative transport''. They do not broadcast the number for a taxi company, they don't tell you how long you should expect to wait, whether you will be refunded, etcetera. Once again, these are things the locals have figured out by themselves over the years, and the companies in charge seem to use this acquired knowledge as a crutch of sorts, a crutch which falls apart when foreigners come in to the frame. ----------------------------------------------------------------- I have many more complaints about the way Norway disadvantages foreigner workers, tourists, and students, but I will leave things here for now. A country with the size and wealth of Norway should be concerned with matters of accessibility in public transport, and while I by no means believe Norway to be the worst country in the regard, she too fails to meet the mark of acceptable accessibility, at least for non-Norwegian passengers.