VR prices nearly killed me

[Jukka Aho]

According to recent news, VR gets to keep their monopoly at least until 2024.

[Liam1]

The OP complaint lost its momentum for me when first Riku then Bavarain proved that the trip could be done off peak at 18e or with advance planning 30-35e which is cheap and certainly less than driving. Of course if you book last minute at a a popular time you pay extra.

Bit naive to compare the price of petrol alone (then assuming that there are 4 people in the car)
We all know running a car is v expensive here. Compare with a one day hire car cost (ironically about €80!).
If there are 4 of you, unless you ar every spontaneous, probably means pre planning so flexibility / advanced knowledge of trip so back to the €18 returns...

If VR were forced to try to charge the cost of each journey and not make profits, you'd maybe get these tickets at say €40 return, but on the flipside there would be a number of vital late evening / sunday services charging the 3 -4 customer on board €500 apiece!

[Tullynessle Turnip]

Alaska - do u pay 1.80 Euros/litre for gasoline there? Nope, didn't think so - more like 0.70 Euros/litre (ie. a third)

VR used to have reasonable prices but Finland is copying "Rip-Off Britain".

The answer is to demand better wages! ...but then your Finnish union representative is drinking coffee with your boss and scheming how to stab you in the back so he gets a nice new car...

And why is is that Richard Branson likes the word 'Virgin' so much???

[onkko]

The prices have been hiking day and night and nobody really cares? For a round trip to Helsinki from Tampere I paid freaking 80 euros today. Bus takes really long time or else they have decent price of roundtirp at 50 euros. For a half decent quality train (Inter City) with WiFi facility 80 euros is really really expensive. VR prices are really killers. I guess even the fuel cost for roundtrip wouldn't reach 40 euros for decent car.

prices are like this due to VR monopoly?

If I eat only frozen pizza from Lidl, bloody 80 euros would be the dinner for my whole month.

So when they will kill you, tell me amount and if thats average or your.
Regards one who dont have any public transportation.
If what you are telling is true i think its good for removing illegals, i assume illegal dont have that much of... Well anyway killing foreigners isnt that bad if they arent doctors and doctors wont die in stuff like this.
Short, why we should care?

[Pursuivant]

Btw, in the UK each company has contracted specific destinations / stops, they cannot transport you anywhere you wish to go. Which means the competition is much more limited than you might think.

And you think the bus operators can just choose when and where to take people?

[kp900t]

Travel is 50% off for students.

[Alex.Sm]

[Upphew]

Bus lines are more complicated (in every country I guess) but they have one advantage: none of the bus operators owns / rents the roads. Which is not the case with railroad.

Who owns majority of roads? Who owns majority of rails? Answer for both: http://portal.liikennevirasto.fi/sivu/w ... rt_network

[Liam1]

Liam1 wrote:
The OP complaint lost its momentum for me when first Riku then Bavarain proved that the trip could be done off peak at 18e or with advance planning 30-35e which is cheap and certainly less than driving. Of course if you book last minute at a a popular time you pay extra.
And that extra is double the amount

That is reasonable - you paid it after all. Just as VR need to halve the prices for the very off peak fares-

I think you are in IT aren't you? Tell me would you as an individual or any IT company, charge normal rates if you get a call to urgently fix a server on Sunday night? Assume that you'd want double - maybe triple pay - right? Same principle if the purchaser needs something, the supplier charges more. When the boot is on the other foot (e.g. the IT company is short of work and tendering for an annual contract), the purhaser gets a better deal-

[Bavarian]

Travelling around city is free for students in Germany

Did you spend your time thanking the taxpayers who subsidized this for you?

[Alex.Sm]

[Alex.Sm]

[Pursuivant]

Well yeah, didn't Tallinn just go "all free public transport"?

[riku2]

Well yeah, didn't Tallinn just go "all free public transport"?

It's only free for residents in the same way that Helsinki has cheaper season ticket prices for residents.
I don't really agree with that kind of system, at a simplistic level helsinki residents did pay through they taxes towards local transport so might be justified in having cheaper tickets but people living further away and working in helsinki are encouraged to use their cars since they pay the full non-resident price. I think they recently extended the zone for who qualifies but it took them years to do this.

[winsum]

Last time I travelled by VR was when I was student years ago i.e. on 50% discount Now I would go by onnibus or make use of "ride share" concept which I heard is working well in other countries too with expensive fares like Germany. You can find many offered rides to popular destinations in different days, fuel is meant to be shared. And it works if you are flexible and not in a hurry or emergency.

While I travelled alone between HKI-TRE, I always offered ride rather than requested, then I could leave whenever I wanted. Sometimes I had to excuse people when there were too many requests. I like this concept, where profit is out of the equation. Try it, Who knows you end up riding a fancy German sedan rather than VR someday "for less than 10 euros"