CLASS

TRAVEL
16
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2015
Politics | Bright?
Biking, Busing
And Walking:
Reykjavík For
The Carless
Words by Alexander de Ridder
Photos by Art Bicnick
I recently moved to Iceland from the Netherlands. I have
neither a car nor a license to drive one, which my mother
(who is Icelandic) warned me would be tough. “Pfft,”
I thought to myself, “how bad can it be?” I didn’t have a
car in the Netherlands either, and I got by just fine with a
mixture of walking, cycling, public transport (trains and
buses mostly) and cycling. (No, but seriously, the Dutch
take their cycling very seriously.)
Upon my arrival, I was surprised to
find that while walking was a very fine
option (do note that this was written in
early September—ask me again come
November), cycling and public transport
are absolutely shit options for
getting around.
Cyclists are fucking crazy
Cyclists are crazy where I come from
(this includes myself). We don’t give
a shit about cars, or busses, or crosswalks—in
downtown areas, we rule the
streets. Reykjavík cyclists are insane
even by Dutch standards, though: these
assholes wear helmets and ride their
bikes on the sidewalk. A few bike paths
exist, like on Hverfisgata, and the city
says it wants to create more, but as of
now those paths are fractured, few and
far between, leaving the city’s cyclists
with two options: the street, or the sidewalk.
They choose the sidewalk—and
they choose wrong.
Hear me out: cycling on the sidewalk
is dangerous business. Cars are predictable,
for the most part: if a car hits you,
the driver is liable. Therefore, drivers
are careful not to hit you. Pedestrians
are to cyclists, however, what cyclists
are to cars. And worse, they’re unpredictable.
If you’re passing someone and
ring your bell, they can go anywhere.
Some people stop, some people feign left
and dodge right, and some people curl
themselves into a ball and sob uncontrollably.
The point is: as a cyclist you
are powerless in the face of pedestrian
dodging tactics.
What, then?
Since Iceland has no trains, this leaves
us with buses. And buses here are weird.
Firstly, the payment system is unnecessarily
complicated—requiring customers
to pay using exact change, an app
or a monthly subscription pass model (a
three-month subscription is only economical
if you take more than sixty bus
rides during the period). Furthermore, a
single ride’s price is the same no matter
how far you plan on taking the bus—so
if I want to take the bus for a single stop
(because it looks like it might rain, and
the sun is in my eye, and I hurt my ankle
the other day, etc…), I pay just as much
as if I wanted to go to the end of the line.
This is incredibly counterintuitive.
Simply put, public transport in almost
any European country is superior
to the Icelandic model. But, this is a
claim that merits further investigation.
How does the Strætó service compare
to foreign public transit providers, in the
eyes of its users? Let’s have a look.
Keeping clients happy
The Hague, the city I grew up in, has
a bus company called HTM. In 2013,
HTM’s customers rated their service
a 7.5 out of 10, which—considering the
Dutch “zesjescultuur” (“Culture of Cs”?
“Culture of Mediocrity”?), is actually
pretty damn good. (For the uninformed,
there is this idea in the Netherlands, that
a rating of six out of ten—which translates
to a C, the lowest passing grade—
is acceptable, and once you reach that
level, there’s no point in getting better.)
Meanwhile, another Dutch bus company
called Qbuzz, which services the
frigid north of the Netherlands, scored
a 7.3 on customer satisfaction in 2014.
Overall, the Dutch seem pretty happy
with their buses.
Danish bus company Movia reports
that 95% of polled commuters say they
are satisfied with its services, with 20%
claiming they are “very satisfied” with
the overall bus service. What the Danes
were least happy with was the frequency
in which the buses run—and let’s face
it, that’s a problem basically goddamn
everywhere.
And then there’s Strætó. Strætó,
based on my informal polls among commuters
and passersby, is mostly thought
of in negative terms. The service is expensive
and complex, and the central
bus station Hlemmur is a huge clusterfuck
with no overview (funny story: I
once had to take bus 16 from Hlemmur.
I walked three circles around the building,
and never saw a sign of the bus until
it had driven past me. To this day, I have
no idea where the 16 bus stops).
You’d expect a customer satisfaction
poll to reflect the many, many negatives
aspects of the service. But, it doesn’t.
After much prodding, Strætó agreed to
share with me the results of their 2014
customer satisfaction poll, which revealed
the opinions of more than 500
passengers, including other interesting
data, such as the fact that most of
Strætó’s customers are in the 12-18 yearold
age range (and thus forced to rely on
public transport—take that as you will).
Based on Strætó’s data, a whopping
84.3% of customers were overall happy
with the service, with 24.1% noting that
they were “very satisfied”. The numbers
aren’t exactly equivalent, but I would say
that this puts Strætó above the Dutch
bus services. The Icelandic beat the
Dutch, again. Oh, the horror!
The customer service department
at Strætó was actually kind enough to
send me the results they garnered from
their “Additional comment” question
on their 2014 customer satisfaction poll.
Common complaints were the lack of
frequency (especially during rush hour),
the lack of timeliness, and the price, but
these are buried in comments like “Play
music on the bus,” “Don’t play music
on the bus,” “Uncomfortable but cosy,”
and my personal favourite “People are
always chatting to the bus driver.” Good
heavens, no!
Pretty terrible,
yet not that bad
Public transport in Iceland is shit, but
maybe not as shitty as you’d think.
Thankfully, the city seems to be constantly
trying to improve its system, like
the recently announced plans to add a
streetcar system that would intersect
with the bus network, providing a faster
alternative for commuters.
My point is: we need to speak up, and
engage in an active dialogue with those
in charge of public transport. Sure, it can
be pretty terrible at times, but, overall it's
not that bad. Providing feedback is the
best we can do, short of starting a competing
bus company or initiating a hostile
takeover of Strætó (I’m not saying I’d
condone that, but if anyone’s interested,
let me know. I’m Dutch, and we’re good
at coming to foreign countries and taking
stuff over. (see also: colonialism)).
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