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Minister saves cheap train tickets for students

The Local Denmark
The Local Denmark - [email protected]
Minister saves cheap train tickets for students
Transport Minister Magnus Heunicke (standing in centre) convinced DSB to keep the tickets. Photo: Niels Ahlmann Olesen/Scanpix

The transport minister put an immediate stop to DSB's plans to eliminate discounted student tickets.

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When national rail operator DSB announced on Monday that it would be eliminating discounted train tickets for students, the backlash was swift and severe. 
 
Transport Minister Magnus Heunicke so strongly disagreed with DSB’s plan to cut the cheap tickets that he intervened and convinced the company to reverse course. 
 
“We had a discussion that concluded with a decision that the student tickets will remain. I would have hated to see public transport be shut off to young students who have a hard time affording it,” Heunicke told Politiken. 
 
The student tickets, called ‘folding-seat tickets’ or klapsædebilletter, allow 16-26 year-old students to buy discounted tickets and travel on trains’ folding seats outside of rush hour traffic. 
 
Heunicke told Politiken that he gave DSB a chance to explain the reasoning behind the decision to eliminate the tickets. 
 
“When I brought it up it was because I naturally wondered why a programme that has been successful would be stopped. It could have been that there were good economic arguments behind it, but these tickets only account for 0.1 percent of DSB’s total ticket sales,” Heunicke said. 
 
DSB said it wanted to eliminate the tickets to make more room for strollers, wheelchairs and luggage, which are stored in the same cars as the folding seats. 
 
But after the meeting with the transport minister, the tickets will remain. 
 
“He said that it was a good idea for the programme to continue and DSB therefore has taken due note of his message,” a DSB press spokesperson told Politiken. 

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