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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/the-alpine-country-going-all-you-can-ride/>
"For Romina Mayer, there was no question that she had to buy the KlimaTicket
(the “Climate Ticket”) when it launched. For just €1095 per year, it gives her
unlimited access to every form of public transportation in her country of
Austria: All buses, undergrounds, trams and local, regional and national trains
— private and public. “I bought it immediately,” said the 57-year-old musician
and music teacher from Vienna.
She was even able to get in at the early bird rate of €949 (€1 is about
USD$1.14), amounting to a 30 percent drop from her transportation budget the
previous year. Since then, her mobility behavior has changed a lot. “I think
less about where I’m going and how much it costs, so I sometimes get to places
I’ve never been before,” she said. Hiking in Brand-Laaben, for example, a
community in the so-called Mostviertel region of Lower Austria. “Only the bus
goes there, and it’s usually very expensive.” She also uses the KlimaTicket
professionally, traveling to Graz and Salzburg for rehearsals and performances.
“It’s a great relief because these performances are usually not well paid.”
The KlimaTicket was introduced in late October 2021. Selling 134,000 tickets in
the first two months, it shattered the government’s first-year target by over
30 percent before 2022 had even begun. Queues formed in front of the ticket
counters in the country of nine million. Even the initiators were surprised.
“The KlimaTicket is a revolution in public transport,” says Leonor Gewässler,
Green Federal Minister for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility,
Innovation and Technology. “This has more than exceeded our expectations.”
There’s a question on everyone’s mind, though: will the KlimaTicket live up to
its name and actually make a dent in the country’s carbon footprint? It turns
out, this might be a trickier question than it seems."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
