arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

rK: What does 'Planka' means and what is Planka.nu ?

L.: In Swedish 'Planka? 'eans to enter something without paying. Planka.nu is a campaign that encourrage people not to pay for public transports in Stockholm and Göteborg and organize a collective insurrance for the fees.

rK: How does it started ? Are transportation that expensive ?

L.: In the beginning of the 90's they increased the price and it became quite unaffordable especially for young people. Nowadays an abonnement is 500 kronors / month. The campaign Planka started in 2001 and is going on since then.

rK: How does that insurrance works ?

L.: You pay 100 kronors / month or 1000 for one year to a bank account, and if ever you got caught by a control crew, you send the fee to us, and we'll pay the fee, which is around 600 kronors.[*].

rK: Does that work ?

L.: Pretty good! At first, the person whom got caught have to pay an extra 100 kronor to the insurance, because we didn't knew how it was gonna work, and to encourrage people to avoid the control crews even if they had suscribed to the inssurance. Finally, we don?t have so many fees to pay. So as we have money enough, it would ridiculous to keepasking for that extra.

rK: How many people are suscribing to this insurrance ?

L.: There're about 500 permanent suscribers, in April we've made a new record with 187 new suscribers. They are mostly young people. When you promote such a system, people show a lot of interest, but they finally don't dare to suscribe ... I also have to stress the point that it only works for subways, since buses drivers check if you have a ticket, and there's always someone controling in the tramways in trams.

rK: Is that insurrance legal ?

L.: Yes. In Stockholm, they are actually ignoring us, pretending we don't existing, in order not to give us media attention. They didn't started any legal suing or such. The situation is different in Göteborg. We started only this year, and the transport company is trying to sue us, claiming this is an illegal insurrance. But they won't succeed since it isn't illegal, we're pretty sure about it. Anyway, they are mostly getting us more known, that's actually quite positive.

rK: Isn't that strange that they don't try to prevent you to do it ?

L. : There's actually no law that makes it illegal to set up such insurrance, there's some kind of 'grey zone' in the law, that makes it possible. The law only says that you can get a fee and have to pay it. But it would be clearly illegal to make fake tickets, for instance. There?re some kind of contradictions on the law: it's actually illegal to enter without paying, but it would also be illegal to prevent us to do it, because it'll go against our freedom of movement.

rK: Does your campaign also include specific demands ?

L.: Definitely! We are campaigning for totally free public transportation. That's our goal! Today about half of the price of public transports are financed by the taxes. According to some studies everyone that earns less than 40,000 kronors / month would benefit if the transportation in Stockholm was totally financed by taxes. It would means that we should increase slightly the taxes. But as the taxes are proportional to the incomes, most people would benefit from it, only higher incomes would lose a bit. This have been experienced already in two towns in Sweden, and it works perfect.

[*] 10 kronors (Swedish Crowns) = +/- 1 euro ]