It's kind of ridiculous. But good to know.
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
7 points (81.8% liked)
Finland
1210 readers
14 users here now
English-language discussions and news relating to Finland and the Finnish culture.
The Finnish community for natives and proficient users of the language ----> !suomi@sopuli.xyz
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I don't know if this works with HSL, I have never travelled by their things when visiting Helsinki. But with all my tickets, Matkahuolto or VR, I always just take a screenshot of my ticket and crop it. So before hopping onto the bus/train, I can safely open the photo from gallery and then reopen my phone once someone wants to see the ticket. No need to worry about any app lagging or suddenly not working or logging me out from my account and so on.
The full reasoning for their rules isn't there and I don't know whether it's been written down anywhere. I'm interested in the logic and I'm thinking the following could be how it goes:
First of all, I think it's enforced differently in metro vs trams and trunk buses (where you don't show the ticket to the driver, to save time) vs normal buses (where you do show the ticket to the driver, to reduce fare evasion and disorderly conduct). Here, we're talking about a trunk bus, I think.
Why do they employ ticket inspectors? To make random checks of ~1% of tickets to give people a concrete reason to buy a ticket instead of riding for free.
Why is the penalty fare €100? It needs to be large enough to make people think they want to buy a ticket for every trip instead of paying the occasional penalty. (The actual amount is defined in a law.)
Why do you have to buy the ticket early when paying in the app if you are boarding a trunk bus or tram? If you could first board and see whether there are inspectors onboard, you could decide to buy a ticket only in those 1% of cases and at the same time mostly avoid the risk of the penalty, so the penalty wouldn't be useful anymore and people wouldn't have the concrete reason to buy tickets anymore.
Why is it not enough to order the ticket early? The timestamps they have (when you placed the order, when the doors closed, when you received the ticket) are not enough to check whether you bought the ticket before you boarded.
Why do they require you to have received the ticket before the doors closed? They have the two timestamps to check whether this was the case, and the only way you can be sure that you meet this requirement is by not boarding before you have received the ticket.
Why do they check the timestamps to the seconds? It can be a matter of seconds whether you had the time to first see the inspectors and then order the ticket before the doors closed.
Could the system be more convenient and still efficient? Perhaps.
Is there something you can do? If you are not reasonably sure you'll have the mobile ticket before you board or before the doors close, buy a ticket onboard using a travel card or a payment card (which you can have on a phone virtually). (The rules and fares are different there.)
Are there loopholes in the system? Maybe.