Luxembourg is a country of the privileged. You think they will start taking buses because it is free?
Enough with this crap. Leave the drivers alone
Because it sucks, they can even pay me for using it and I will stick to car if I want to be 100% sure that I will not be late.
It’s not like people were buying 50k+ € cars because tickets costed money.
Take my kid to the crèche and drive to work with my car: 35min.
Same thing, but by bus and train: 1h55min.
Same thing again, but without kid and crèche: 25m vs. 1h10.
Even if it costs me a lot of money, it’s totally worth it, so don’t come at me with that privilege cr*p, it just costs me way to much time…get it under an hour, and i’d take public transport more often.
And i live pretty near to the Centre and work near Pétange…
Well, tried coming home last night by bus – ended up having to walk 😵💫
It’s not only the price of the ticket that makes the difference, it is the quality of the network of public transportation that should be more efficient and faster.
Over the years, unfortunately, the growth of the public transport system and spatial planning have grown independently from each other. There is still a lot of improvement that needs to be done to reach more users.
This article probably is written by somebody who never uses public transport here 🤷🏻♀️
I hate that this country is organised around cars so much like you wouldn’t believe
They should’ve bought high speed golf carts for everyone.
There are serious issues with the free transport Luxemburg provides, particularly at night. Last time i used it, mainly to be able to drink and get home without driving, often the buses to the outer towns from the city center would not show up at all. I had one at 1 am, one at 2 am and one at 3 am. Sometimes only one showed up. Sometimes none would show up and I’d have to pay a taxi home and you know how expensive that is. This happened multiple times until i got fed up.
Unless you live in the center, the public transportation only kinda works. I’d love to go full public transportation one day though, but right now it’s not viable for many people. We need more long range buses between towns (few stops, moving quickly), we need them more often, but most of all, for public transportation to be viable, they need to show up like it says on the schedule and the app. Right now they don’t.
I live in Colmar-Berg and schol in Lux-city. Car takes me there in 30mins (50 with heavy trafic). By public transport it’d take 1h at best.
After school, taking the bus there’s not much I can really do. By the time I get somewhere and out it’s already closing time. If I need to go shopping I’m limited by my own physical strength and the 2 little arms I got. Summer time and some people love to ignore the invention of deodorants and if I’m carrying groceries, the bags are cumbersome and the heat makes them spoil faster.
Getting home with public transport I always feel incredibly tired and in the end there’s not much I can do during the day.
By taking the car my wallet suffers immensely, but doing anything is convenient or at the very least comfortable. I get to do several things after school if needed, can do whatever for a couple hours until businesses close and I don’t need to wait for my bus to arrive for a whole 25mins while standing in a crowded place with some people who have never heard of deodorant. (AC is also big +)
It free, but at least it’s horrible…
If only it was “love for the car”… whoever thinks I spend many hundreds of euros every month because I love it is clearly clinically insane.
30 minutes by car or 1h30 – 2h00 in 4 buses/trains. Hmmm
I would take the bus easy more often if at least i could depend on it coming when it’s supposed to. I decided to go pick my kid from school by bus today, checked the schedule and everything only to end up waiting 15 minutes at the bus stop because the bus just didn’t come when it was supposed to and i had to take another line after i got tired waiting. If I took my car i would have been at the school in 10 minutes. Also what’s the deal with bus stops only having the schedule for some lines and not all that pass through that bus stop?
When you are living in the norh, free transport or not change nothing, you still need a car
Like in belgium, everyone is paying for the tram that only a few people on bw will use
I know a lot of people have valid reasons to chose car vs public transport, some here have stated some valid examples but let’s be honest a lot are just used to private transportation means and don’t want to change their habits.
My own example is exactly that (well, before kids). I leave in a small village 25min from kirchberg, have a bus stop 100m from my house where one of those small electric buses stops. Never crowded, at worst 2/3 full for a few stops. Takes me 25min between my house and lu expo and then another 5 for a couple stops with the tram. Could not expect anything better.
Still I Donny know any of my neighbours taking the bus. I’m still in the crèche/primary school period with three kids so it’s complicated but I really think that without some form of incentives/obligation, the situation will not change much. It moves but too slowly to make any impact.
Charge a lot more for parking. Cars will disappear from the city
One of the problems is that the infrastructure is still primarily built for private cars. The tram is 99% window dressing, and the buses have to drive in the same mess and traffic of private cars, and the train infrastructure is at least fifty years outdated. Obviously people are choosing what you build for them not necessarily what is cheaper in terms of money.
Public transport in Lux is similar in timetable standards to services provided in most developed countries back in the 1980’s. My daily bus is always 25 to 50mins late. I can never plan to be in the office at a set time unless I drive. Tram is overcrowded and unpleasant.
Love of cars? Yeah, sure. I’ve just checked: using public transport I’d have to leave at 6.23 to get to work while by car 7.35 is fine. (And by bike it’s 35 minutes in total.)
And that’s ok(ish) since it’s a transversal connection starting at a more rural locality and not going to Lux. city or such. Public transport can’t do it all, but for the most used routes it must be perfect. That’s where it’s still failing.
Cities reoriented for cars since the 60’s. Many reversed but, structurally, most cities are car oriented.
I live in a village a few km from city. When I have to go a few km to the next village it’s too far to walk/cycle, by car it’s about 10-15 minutes but by bus I have to go into city centre, switch twice, wait in those abominable long bus stops where you never know where your bus will stop, then you have to run to it and you still miss it, total close to 2 hours one way. Do I love my car? No, I have husband to love, but we both use the car to get around. It’s f-ing expensive but the free option is not an option really.
It’s gotten a bit better now but not so long ago if I had early shift (6am) I would have had to leave the house at 22:30 the night before and still get to work 10 minutes late.
By car it’s 20 minutes.
Also I’m a bit of a car guy, I like my cars, I like driving, I don’t want to give that up. I’ll also probably be one of the last to go electric.
Why would you want it to? Public transportation, even if “free”, has it’s inescaple limitations.
For starters, you have to wait in the cold / rain / snow /
heat for the bus to arrive.
And then it not only takes twice as long to get to your destination, you are also limited by the destinations covered.
And service may not be running late at night if you are out partying.
And if you like travelling long distances, like I do, public transportation is simply not an option.
I, like so many more, like to be the master of our locomotion. Something that may not appeal to the granola crowd.
People in Tokyo (as in living in Tokyo and working in the same city) commute for 3 to 6 hours every day. Again: they live in the same city they work in!
And here people are upset if a bus takes 30 min. instead of 10.
Some people need more perspective I think. But the better people are off, the more they complain about little things.
Maybe because no one wants to use shitty public transport no matter if it is free or not
I’ll be quite direct and honest with my view. As an expat from a non European background, I feel Luxembourg is doing everything more or less right to attract foreign investments plus attracting a certain crowd for selling these million euro homes.
While, for me, it somewhat fits perfectly for a short term a euro feel plus a potential for a major upgrade of passport .
Unfortunately, It still doesn’t fit for my long term orientation revolves around good and affordable housing ,transport and restaurants.
” *the modern funicular connecting the capital’s old town to the riverside* ”
wut?
Kirchberg is the old town ?
Yep they know it “border trains are unreliable” so Belgians & French will still **have to** use their car.
That’s the curse of living outside the city. I live in Esch and it’s a real pain to plan a night out with friends, either I gamble my luck and leave at 23, or I have to endure god knows where until 5am. And let’s not go into the morning bus delays.
Free public transport does not equal efficient or fair
I think a lot of people are just not used to taking public transport regardless of their location- it is a lifestyle shift for sure and not one that works for everybody. If you live or work in an area served by the trains, life is not bad now that the tram in exists in Lux City. If you’re not served by the trains, that’s where real problems begin.
Many people do not understand that public transport is not like having an Uber. No matter where I’ve lived, I’ve had to learn how late the busses usually run and factor in the “average delay” of the system into my commute. That’s the nature of the beast when using public transport that can be impacted by traffic. I also had to learn when it’s better to walk from one place to another instead of following Mobiliteit or Google Maps – which are reliable but not always the most efficient. Very often being willing to walk a few minutes out of my way can save 20-30 minutes of waiting for transfers. Or – in my case – I choose to walk instead of taking two different busses on my morning commute (walk 15 mins to Esch gare, walk 12 minutes from the tram to School) because if I do that in both directions I get near my 10,000 steps for the day. Waterproof boots and a good coat are great investments.
I think there are very real problems (trains stopping at 11:30pm on weekdays heading to Esch, villages not served by rail, public transport lifestyle being difficult for families especially with small kids) but I also believe many many people just prefer the convenience of having a car and the own private space while commuting (ie: would rather sit in rush hour traffic on their car than have to sit next to a stranger on public transport).
They are cancelling the bus lines in the country side…
Ensuring good public transport for villages is not as easy (relatively) as for a big city.
Lux does not want suburbs (effectively). So it forces most of the workforce to live in villages, sometimes remote. Not to mention abroad.
If you had regular suburbs (just sayin’) – growing city – then you can expand good city network. But Lux want’s to eat the cake but keep it as well. And instead of fast, heavy investment in the expensive city-commute transport, it made a populist move to make it free.
It does not help that the public works are done in abysmal pace (adding 1 lane for a short motorway stretch is how many years??). While those responsible just pat each other on the backs on every opportunity (“I’m happy with the progress”). This is a small country, with a lot of money. So much more could have been done already.
35 comments
Luxembourg is a country of the privileged. You think they will start taking buses because it is free?
Enough with this crap. Leave the drivers alone
Because it sucks, they can even pay me for using it and I will stick to car if I want to be 100% sure that I will not be late.
It’s not like people were buying 50k+ € cars because tickets costed money.
Take my kid to the crèche and drive to work with my car: 35min.
Same thing, but by bus and train: 1h55min.
Same thing again, but without kid and crèche: 25m vs. 1h10.
Even if it costs me a lot of money, it’s totally worth it, so don’t come at me with that privilege cr*p, it just costs me way to much time…get it under an hour, and i’d take public transport more often.
And i live pretty near to the Centre and work near Pétange…
Well, tried coming home last night by bus – ended up having to walk 😵💫
It’s not only the price of the ticket that makes the difference, it is the quality of the network of public transportation that should be more efficient and faster.
Over the years, unfortunately, the growth of the public transport system and spatial planning have grown independently from each other. There is still a lot of improvement that needs to be done to reach more users.
This article probably is written by somebody who never uses public transport here 🤷🏻♀️
I hate that this country is organised around cars so much like you wouldn’t believe
They should’ve bought high speed golf carts for everyone.
There are serious issues with the free transport Luxemburg provides, particularly at night. Last time i used it, mainly to be able to drink and get home without driving, often the buses to the outer towns from the city center would not show up at all. I had one at 1 am, one at 2 am and one at 3 am. Sometimes only one showed up. Sometimes none would show up and I’d have to pay a taxi home and you know how expensive that is. This happened multiple times until i got fed up.
Unless you live in the center, the public transportation only kinda works. I’d love to go full public transportation one day though, but right now it’s not viable for many people. We need more long range buses between towns (few stops, moving quickly), we need them more often, but most of all, for public transportation to be viable, they need to show up like it says on the schedule and the app. Right now they don’t.
I live in Colmar-Berg and schol in Lux-city. Car takes me there in 30mins (50 with heavy trafic). By public transport it’d take 1h at best.
After school, taking the bus there’s not much I can really do. By the time I get somewhere and out it’s already closing time. If I need to go shopping I’m limited by my own physical strength and the 2 little arms I got. Summer time and some people love to ignore the invention of deodorants and if I’m carrying groceries, the bags are cumbersome and the heat makes them spoil faster.
Getting home with public transport I always feel incredibly tired and in the end there’s not much I can do during the day.
By taking the car my wallet suffers immensely, but doing anything is convenient or at the very least comfortable. I get to do several things after school if needed, can do whatever for a couple hours until businesses close and I don’t need to wait for my bus to arrive for a whole 25mins while standing in a crowded place with some people who have never heard of deodorant. (AC is also big +)
It free, but at least it’s horrible…
If only it was “love for the car”… whoever thinks I spend many hundreds of euros every month because I love it is clearly clinically insane.
30 minutes by car or 1h30 – 2h00 in 4 buses/trains. Hmmm
I would take the bus easy more often if at least i could depend on it coming when it’s supposed to. I decided to go pick my kid from school by bus today, checked the schedule and everything only to end up waiting 15 minutes at the bus stop because the bus just didn’t come when it was supposed to and i had to take another line after i got tired waiting. If I took my car i would have been at the school in 10 minutes. Also what’s the deal with bus stops only having the schedule for some lines and not all that pass through that bus stop?
When you are living in the norh, free transport or not change nothing, you still need a car
Like in belgium, everyone is paying for the tram that only a few people on bw will use
I know a lot of people have valid reasons to chose car vs public transport, some here have stated some valid examples but let’s be honest a lot are just used to private transportation means and don’t want to change their habits.
My own example is exactly that (well, before kids). I leave in a small village 25min from kirchberg, have a bus stop 100m from my house where one of those small electric buses stops. Never crowded, at worst 2/3 full for a few stops. Takes me 25min between my house and lu expo and then another 5 for a couple stops with the tram. Could not expect anything better.
Still I Donny know any of my neighbours taking the bus. I’m still in the crèche/primary school period with three kids so it’s complicated but I really think that without some form of incentives/obligation, the situation will not change much. It moves but too slowly to make any impact.
Charge a lot more for parking. Cars will disappear from the city
One of the problems is that the infrastructure is still primarily built for private cars. The tram is 99% window dressing, and the buses have to drive in the same mess and traffic of private cars, and the train infrastructure is at least fifty years outdated. Obviously people are choosing what you build for them not necessarily what is cheaper in terms of money.
Public transport in Lux is similar in timetable standards to services provided in most developed countries back in the 1980’s. My daily bus is always 25 to 50mins late. I can never plan to be in the office at a set time unless I drive. Tram is overcrowded and unpleasant.
https://preview.redd.it/o9q4gi0f4mpa1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=b85a09ca65021f6cae7c13410493d5ab63f18706
Love of cars? Yeah, sure. I’ve just checked: using public transport I’d have to leave at 6.23 to get to work while by car 7.35 is fine. (And by bike it’s 35 minutes in total.)
And that’s ok(ish) since it’s a transversal connection starting at a more rural locality and not going to Lux. city or such. Public transport can’t do it all, but for the most used routes it must be perfect. That’s where it’s still failing.
Cities reoriented for cars since the 60’s. Many reversed but, structurally, most cities are car oriented.
I live in a village a few km from city. When I have to go a few km to the next village it’s too far to walk/cycle, by car it’s about 10-15 minutes but by bus I have to go into city centre, switch twice, wait in those abominable long bus stops where you never know where your bus will stop, then you have to run to it and you still miss it, total close to 2 hours one way. Do I love my car? No, I have husband to love, but we both use the car to get around. It’s f-ing expensive but the free option is not an option really.
It’s gotten a bit better now but not so long ago if I had early shift (6am) I would have had to leave the house at 22:30 the night before and still get to work 10 minutes late.
By car it’s 20 minutes.
Also I’m a bit of a car guy, I like my cars, I like driving, I don’t want to give that up. I’ll also probably be one of the last to go electric.
Why would you want it to? Public transportation, even if “free”, has it’s inescaple limitations.
For starters, you have to wait in the cold / rain / snow /
heat for the bus to arrive.
And then it not only takes twice as long to get to your destination, you are also limited by the destinations covered.
And service may not be running late at night if you are out partying.
And if you like travelling long distances, like I do, public transportation is simply not an option.
I, like so many more, like to be the master of our locomotion. Something that may not appeal to the granola crowd.
People in Tokyo (as in living in Tokyo and working in the same city) commute for 3 to 6 hours every day. Again: they live in the same city they work in!
And here people are upset if a bus takes 30 min. instead of 10.
Some people need more perspective I think. But the better people are off, the more they complain about little things.
Maybe because no one wants to use shitty public transport no matter if it is free or not
I’ll be quite direct and honest with my view. As an expat from a non European background, I feel Luxembourg is doing everything more or less right to attract foreign investments plus attracting a certain crowd for selling these million euro homes.
While, for me, it somewhat fits perfectly for a short term a euro feel plus a potential for a major upgrade of passport .
Unfortunately, It still doesn’t fit for my long term orientation revolves around good and affordable housing ,transport and restaurants.
” *the modern funicular connecting the capital’s old town to the riverside* ”
wut?
Kirchberg is the old town ?
Yep they know it “border trains are unreliable” so Belgians & French will still **have to** use their car.
That’s the curse of living outside the city. I live in Esch and it’s a real pain to plan a night out with friends, either I gamble my luck and leave at 23, or I have to endure god knows where until 5am. And let’s not go into the morning bus delays.
Free public transport does not equal efficient or fair
I think a lot of people are just not used to taking public transport regardless of their location- it is a lifestyle shift for sure and not one that works for everybody. If you live or work in an area served by the trains, life is not bad now that the tram in exists in Lux City. If you’re not served by the trains, that’s where real problems begin.
Many people do not understand that public transport is not like having an Uber. No matter where I’ve lived, I’ve had to learn how late the busses usually run and factor in the “average delay” of the system into my commute. That’s the nature of the beast when using public transport that can be impacted by traffic. I also had to learn when it’s better to walk from one place to another instead of following Mobiliteit or Google Maps – which are reliable but not always the most efficient. Very often being willing to walk a few minutes out of my way can save 20-30 minutes of waiting for transfers. Or – in my case – I choose to walk instead of taking two different busses on my morning commute (walk 15 mins to Esch gare, walk 12 minutes from the tram to School) because if I do that in both directions I get near my 10,000 steps for the day. Waterproof boots and a good coat are great investments.
I think there are very real problems (trains stopping at 11:30pm on weekdays heading to Esch, villages not served by rail, public transport lifestyle being difficult for families especially with small kids) but I also believe many many people just prefer the convenience of having a car and the own private space while commuting (ie: would rather sit in rush hour traffic on their car than have to sit next to a stranger on public transport).
They are cancelling the bus lines in the country side…
Ensuring good public transport for villages is not as easy (relatively) as for a big city.
Lux does not want suburbs (effectively). So it forces most of the workforce to live in villages, sometimes remote. Not to mention abroad.
If you had regular suburbs (just sayin’) – growing city – then you can expand good city network. But Lux want’s to eat the cake but keep it as well. And instead of fast, heavy investment in the expensive city-commute transport, it made a populist move to make it free.
It does not help that the public works are done in abysmal pace (adding 1 lane for a short motorway stretch is how many years??). While those responsible just pat each other on the backs on every opportunity (“I’m happy with the progress”). This is a small country, with a lot of money. So much more could have been done already.