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Rail fares set to increase across Denmark in 2024

The price of rail tickets will increase by up to 13 percent in Denmark next year, with most locations in the country likely to see higher fares.

Published: 25 September 2023 16:51 CEST
Rail fares set to increase across Denmark in 2024
Travel across Denmark's Great Belt Bridge by rail will see the biggest price increases in 2024. Photo: René Strandbygaard/DSB

National rail operator DSB has announced its 2024 fares after agreement with regional traffic companies and operators Arriva and DOT.

The fares for 2024 were published by DSB on its website on Monday, and will come into effect on January 21st.

“Next year, something will be different about the prices when you travel by public transport,” DSB said on its website.

Prices are being put up next in response to increasing costs, the rail operator said.

The “price regulation” which will take effect next year comes after a “backlog of costs from 2022 and 2023”, it said.

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The price changes vary between regions and are dependent on the ticket type, but average at around 10 percent.

Many of the higher price changes are in Copenhagen and Zealand, but they also apply in Jutland and Funen.

Travel using the prepaid Rejsekort will cost between 8.75 percent and 12.8 percent more, while the Pendlerkort, the prepay card used by commuters, is up by 5 percent on average in the west of the country compared to 11.2 percent on average for travel east of the Great Belt Bridge.

Single tickets will cost 9.5 percent more although journeys east of the Great Belt Bridge are significantly cheaper in this regard, costing 0.9 percent more than the current price.

A summary of the price changes is as follows:

Rejsekort

  • Travel across the Great Belt: Average price increase of between 8.75 and 10 percent
  • Travel west of the Great Belt: Average price increase of 11.6 percent
  • Travel east of the Great Belt: Average price increase of 12.8 percent

Pendlerkort

  • Travel across the Great Belt: Average price increase of 6.2 percent
  • Travel west of the Great Belt: Average price increase of 5.0 percent
  • Travel east of the Great Belt: Average price increase of 11.2 percent

Single tickets

  • Travel across the Great Belt: Average price increase of 9.5 percent
  • Travel west of the Great Belt: Average price increase of 7.7 percent
  • Travel east of the Great Belt: Average price increase of 0.9 percent

A more thorough description of the price changes including various discount cards for students and pensioners can be found on DSB’s website.

Travel between the eastern and western parts of Denmark over the Great Belt Bridge will see the steepest of the prices rises, but DSB customers will still be able to make savings by purchasing Orange tickets, the limited number of reduced-price tickets for set departure times made available by DSB.

“If you can travel outside of peak times, there are still very good opportunities to find a good offer,” DSB’s head of customer services Charlotte Kjærulff told news wire Ritzau.

For example, Orange tickets from Aarhus to Copenhagen can be purchased from 119 kroner, almost a quarter of the regular single-ticket price, which is 469 kroner.

The Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority (Trafikstyrelsen) has input into DSB’s prices.

The government agency decides the limits by which public transport fares may be put up. Costs at operators are taken into account.

Recent years have seen transport operators face increasing energy costs and inflation.

DSB has not raised prices to the full limit set by the travel authority, with the average price increase across the country not amounting to the 2024 limit of 10.3 percent set by the Danish Civil Aviation and Railway Authority.

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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. 

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