The issue of how to take payment for transit has pretty much already been solved by the Dutch. Regardless of where in the whole country you are, regardless of operator, you can be sure that you’re ready to board any bus, tram, ferry or even train! All thanks to OV Chipkaart. All you need to do is, upon boarding the vehicle (or entering the train station) tap your payment card of choice on a reader and tap it again when exiting. It’s this simple. You don’t even need to get a dedicated card to use it, all payment cards (including Apple Pay) work. If you are eligible for any discounts (for example: you’re a student) you need to use a physical OV Chipkaart. Regardless of who you are the system will calculate the best possible price for the route you took. Your travel history is easily visible in the OV Pay app.

It genuinely took me aback how easy and seemless it was to buy public transport tickets in the Netherlands when I visited last Fall. Where I come from — Poland, paying for transit is at the best of times slightly confusing and at the worst it can be nigh impossible.

Trains (Limbo)

Getting train tickets is easy because there’s only a handful of rail operators the biggest of which PKP Intercity and Polregio have been selling tickets online for many years. The easiest way to do this is through a privately-owned app Koleo. If you’re booking a trip with many operators however (for example changing from an intercity train to a regional one) things might get tricky. Koleo cannot sell you a through ticket in this scenario. This can be an issue in case of delays, compensation and in some cases may prove to be more expensive than it has to be. I believe that the only solution here is to either buy a through ticket at a station counter or through Bilkom. This is the only situation in which I would consider using this publicly-developed app because the user experience is quite dreadful. It’s unintuitive, constantly logs me out and is overall rather clunky. Through Bilkom you can get a „joint ticket” which can sometimes be cheaper than booking separate ones.

If you travel a lot (and I mean a lot), you can probably skip all the trouble with tickets by getting the Intercity Card (Karta Intercity) from PKP IC. This the Polish equivalent to the German BahnCard100. It allows you to travel on all domestic trains. Usually you don’t even have to buy a seat reservation (with the exception of ExpressIntercityPremium trains and beds on night trains). The only downside is that Karta Intercity is exorbitantly expensive at 11,000 zł per year (or 5500 zł with a discount)

Things start to get complicated wherever you’re booking international journeys. As far as I know it is not possible at all to buy an international through ticket online. Even if you’re using the not-so-great PKP Intercity app (it’s one of three publicly-developed apps for buying train tickets along with Bilkom and PKP.appka. Madness!) you’re forced to book the national and international trains seperately. Okay it is possible to buy a through ticket but only through Deutsche Bahn who will offer you a very expensive rate on all national PKP IC trains.

Take for example a trip from Szczecin Główny to Praha Hlavni Nadraži through Poznań Główny. About one month out, DB will happily sell me a through ticket on this route for 106,40€. PKP IC however only wants 44,33€ (188 zł). A 62€ premium!

Urban and suburban transit (Greed)

Unlike some other countries in the region like Germany or Austria, Poland doesn’t have any country-wide tickets for local transportation. There also aren’t any voivodeship-level (equivalent to German Länder) transport associations which offer joint tickets. There are a couple regions where most of the voivediship is connected by local transit operated by a singular entity, most notably the Tricity, the Upper-Silesian and Zagłębie Metropolis and the „Warsaw donut” (cities and towns around Warsaw). Outside those few places the closest we have to transport associations are związki powiatowo-gminne (powiat-gmina associations) which operate some buses together at the lowest level of local administration. Also many gminy (lowest level of government), powiaty (2nd lowest), cities and voivodeships operate bus and tram services on their own.

Because there are so many different bus and tram operators within the country, buying tickets is often quite a disjointed experience. It’s usually not overly difficult just confusing and definitely not seamless. Thankfully, if you’re a tourist who only visits bigger cities, you probably won’t feel most of the frustration that comes from it. Every city offers simple to understand multi-day tickets and you should probably buy those. They can be purchased from machines, dedicated apps such as Jakdojade or zbiletem and Polish banking apps. Same goes for timed (usually 15-90 min tickets) and single-ride tickets.

Many cities offer their own transit chip cards but sadly none of them are intercompatible and all operate on different rules. Some systems are closed (only accept transit cards like in Szczecin), some are open (accept transit cards and regular payment cards like in the Tricity) and many are somewhere in between (Poznań has seperate readers for bank cards). Oftentimes those cards are only for residents like in Warszawa and Kraków while in other cities you can get anonymous ones (Poznań and Szczecin) or order personalized ones even if you’re not a resident (Tricity). Some cards offer pay-as-you-go fares calculated for every stop passed (Poznań) while others function as a glorified coin purse only allowing you to buy tickets from machines (Szczecin). The only commonality between all those card systems is the fact that you can use them to store your long-term tickets digitally.

The most promising transit card system out of all of these is FALA functioning in the whole Pomorskie voivodeship. It’s similar to OV Chipkaart in that you tap in and tap out of each vehicle and it automatically calculates the cheapest correct fare. There are a lot of different fares in the region but thankfull you don’t have to think about which one to choose…unless you’re taking the train. While I’m happy that buying regional train tickets is possible…it is definitely where FALA falls short. You can’t tap in and tap out at stations, instead you first use a machine to search for your route. Then you select which fare to use and only then you buy a ticket for a specific train. It’s an unnecessarily complex process from the passengers’ perspective. It is not surprising however since fare integration (using the same ticket to travel on different operators) is sadly in its infancy in Poland.

Being able to use public transit tickets on regional rail isn’t the norm in Poland. Every single city that wishes to allow it needs to negotiate with either Polregio or one of the other, smaller regional rail operators (Koleje Dolnośląskie, WKD, Koleje Śląskie etc.). The resulting patchwork of many „joined” tickets can be difficult decipher. One such case can be seen in Warsaw, where visitors can be fooled into thinking that the joined ZTM-KM-WKD ticket will allow them to ride any trains operated by Warszawska Kolej Dojazdowa and Koleje Mazowieckie when in fact some trains are not covered by it. Commercial trains such as „Słoneczny” and „Słoneczny BIS” to the Tricity aren’t covered even on routes inside Warsaw. It’s up to the passenger to know which trains are „commercial” and which ones are „public”.

Another time where I had trouble with regional trains within cities is when I tried to ride a Koleje Wielkopolskie regional train from Poznań Główny to Poznań Garbary to visit the Citadel Park. Since all trams and busses accept the PEKA chip card as a means of payment and ZTM Poznań offers monthly tickets that are valid on KW trains I assumed that I can just scan my PEKA card on the train instead of bothering with buying tickets through an app. I assumed wrongly! PEKA somehow isn’t accepted (at least not the e-wallet feature which lets you pay as you go).

On a side note. I find it very funny that if you’re riding a train from Opacz to Warszawa Śródmieście on the WKD line you can validate some tickets not only by using a ticket validator but also by simply writing the current date and time on the paper ticket.

Rural transit (Treachery)

During the communist era in Poland rural, regional and intercity bus transportation was handled by PKS (Państwowa Komunikacja Autobusowa - National Bus Transit). In 1990 it was divided into 176 small companies which handled their share of the transportation market. Most of them have been given to gminy and powiaty to be handled. Oftentimes those bus companies where then privatized or liquidated. They were no longer there to provide a valuable service to local communities. They were there to generate profit. As a result, unprofitable routes were cut and frequencies on the remaining ones were lowered. The rolling stock serving those routes is usually old minibuses with not much in the way of passenger information. Online timetables are often out of date and live delay information is almost non-existent.

Trying to buy any tickets for routes leading to small towns and villages is about as pleasant as pulling teeth. Your best bet is either buying them at the bus station (provided you’re close to one) or from the bus driver themselves. Always remember to bring cash with you, as the bus driver is unlikely to accept payment cards…a lot of cash. Since rural transit is mostly private, it’s very expensive for what it is. There usually aren’t any discounts (or they’re much lower than on other transport modes). For example many people living in Szczecin like to make daytrips to seaside resorts because the city is only roughly a hundred kilometers from the coast. If you wanted to visit the town of Rewal, it would set you back 38-79 PLN (9-19€) one way via a private bus. Visiting an equally distant city o Świnoujście costs only 27-36 PLN (6-9€) via a public train…and you don’t have to frantically search for an ATM before your bus arrives because getting a free payment terminal from the polish government is apparently a Herculean effort for those tax-dodgers that operate glorified marshrutkas in places where a couple decades ago you had usable public transportation.

If you’re ever unfortunate enough to want to travel to a small town or village in Poland that is not connected by rail your best bet is to try and find a bus on E-podróżnik . Some bus companies even sell tickets online on there (a very small minority sadly).

Plans for the future (Purgatory)

Thankfully it’s not all doom and gloom as you hopefully see. The current state of affairs isn’t awful or anything…it just should be better, especially outside large cities. There are currently talks of creating a country-wide tickets for transit possibly inspired by the Deutschland-Ticket. While the Deutschland-Ticket has had its fair share of criticism I think it’s a step in the right direction. I can’t help but wonder how many more people would, at least sometimes, consider taking public transit if the friction of buying tickets could be eliminated. Only time will tell however if we’ll see those much needed reforms.