Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

TRANSPORT

How you can use DSB app to check in to public transport across Denmark

Denmark’s national rail operator DSB has updated the check-in function on its app to enable passengers to check in for journeys.

Published: 29 April 2024 16:51 CEST
How you can use DSB app to check in to public transport across Denmark
DSB's app now allows you to check in for journeys instead of using a Rejsekort. Photo: Astrid Maria Busse Rasmussen/DSB

DSB on Monday launched a new function on its app that can be used on all forms of public transportation in Jutland, Funen and Zealand.

The app now allows you to pay for your journey and to check in on buses, local trains or metros.

Most transport users in Denmark still use a physical Rejsekort for this purpose. While the Rejsekort is also being replaced by an app, the Rejsekort app is still in the process of being fully rolled out.

READ ALSO: How to get and use Denmark’s new Rejsekort app

To use the DSB app, you can use the “check in” function in the app and then “check out” when your journey is complete. Your fare will then be paid using the payment card you link to the app.

If you forget to check out at the end of your trip, the DSB app does this automatically after 15 minutes, preventing you from paying an incorrect fare.

The DSB app – and the forthcoming one from Rejsekort – are likely to increase convenience for many public transport passengers who have previously been reliant on having credit on the physical card and remembering to bring it with them.

“’Check-in’ makes it easier to be a passenger on the train and we are giving are customers the ability to gather all their tickets and journeys in a single app,” DSB commercial director Jens Visholm said in a statement.

While the app function was primarily created for rail passengers, it will also work on buses, light rails and metros, DSB says in the statement.

To use the check-in function, you will need to download the DSB app (if you don’t already have it), and create a user profile.

When you open the check-in function within the app, it will locate the nearest station or bus stop, and also allows you to select the line you are travelling with.

If you change line or form of transport, you will need to make an additional check-in – similarly to the process when using the physical Rejsekort.

When you check out, the app stops tracking your location.

The fare for using the app function is the same as when using a personal Rejsekort.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

TRAVEL NEWS

Do you really need to own a car living in Denmark?

Denmark is one of the most expensive countries in the world for owning a car, its public transport is one of the best, and if you want to cycle, it's mostly flat. There are few places where it makes more sense to ditch your car.

Published: 10 May 2024 16:35 CEST
Do you really need to own a car living in Denmark?

The case against owning a car in Denmark

Denmark’s Vehicle Registration Tax, together with VAT, more than doubles the cost of buying a petrol or diesel car, making owning a car considerably more expensive in Denmark than in its neighbours Germany and Sweden, although electric cars that cost less than 436,000 kroner are currently tax-exempt.

If you use a car to commute into Copenhagen, Aarhus, or Odense, you will also often find yourself stuck in traffic jams, with the Danish Roads Directorate estimating that Danes lose 365,000 hours to traffic jams every weekday, with the Motorring 3 motorway circling Copenhagen, other major access roads to Copenhagen, the E20 south of Odense, and the E45 on either side of Aarhus the most congested roads in the country.

Parking can also be expensive in Danish cities, costing as much as 500 Danish kroner for 24 hours for non-residents. 

How easy is it to get around inside Danish cities without a car? 

Denmark is a cycling nation.

According to Visit Denmark, in 2022, 25 percent of all trips under five kilometers across Denmark were done by bike, and 16 percent of all journeys of any kind. 

Copenhagen’s aim is for fully half of all trips to work and education to be done on bike by 2025. In 2019, the city was already on 44 percent. It’s a similar situation for smaller cities like Aarhus, Odense, Vejle, Aalborg and Esbjørg.

But even if you can’t or don’t want to cycle, you can still get by in most places without a car, thanks to Denmark’s excellent public transport networks.

Public transport in Denmark has significantly improved only over the last five years, with several new metro lines and light rail systems opening. 

With the Cityringen (M3) and Harbour lines (M4) opening in 2019 and 2020, respectively the Copenhagen Metro can now get you to most places in the city. 

Denmark scrapped its city tram systems in the 1960s and 1970s, with cities like Aarhus and Odense instead shifting to buses for public transport.

There has recently been a recent revival, however, with Aarhus, Odense and Copenhagen all opening or building new tram/light rail systems.

Odense Letbane opened in 2022, making it easy to get to the out of town shopping area where IKEA and other superstores are based and also to the new hospital. Aarhus Letbane opened in 2017, and takes passengers all the way up the coast around the city, from Odder in the south to Grenaa in the north.

Copenhagen next year plans to open a light-rail system which will travel in a ring around the city’s outer suburbs linking Lundtofte in the north to Ishøj in the southwest. 

This will end one of the big drawbacks of the city’s “five finger” transport corridor plan: that while it is quick to travel from the outer suburbs to the centre and vice versa, it is complicated to travel between suburbs which are on a different transport corridors, for example from Albertslund to Herlev, or from Birkerød to Buddinge. 

Even before that opens, however, so long as you are only travelling in and out from the centre, it is extremely convenient to get from central Copenhagen to its suburbs and surrounding towns using the S-trains, which run from 5am until half-past midnight on weekdays, and all night on Fridays and Saturdays. 

This means you can eat out and party with your friends until the small hours, and still normally get back to Køge, Høje Taastrup, Frederikssund, Farum and Hillerød, the furthest out stops. 

Where might you struggle without a car? 

Plans for a light railway or tram between Vejle and Billund, or between the so-called Triangle Region between the cities of Vejle, Kolding and Fredericia have so far come to nothing, and even though the local and regional bus and train services can be good, it’s certainly tougher to survive without a car if you don’t live on Zealand, near Aarhus, or perhaps on Funen. 

Many people do in fact live without owning a car even in the more far-flung villages on Jutland, and on islands like Bornholm, Lolland and Falster.

They still manage to get everywhere they want to go, but it does require waiting. It’s certainly possible to live without a car, but you might feel limited in where to and when you can travel. 

SHOW COMMENTS