Not just any book, mind you. In keeping with an annual tradition, ticket inspectors on national carrier NS were instructed to give free travel to anyone carrying a copy of the novel Jas van Velofte (“Jacket of Promise”) by author Jan Siebelink. The deal came at the culmination of the country’s book week, an annual national literature festival. During each book week, festival organizers release a free book written especially for the occasion, available in generous but still limited numbers to anyone who buys a book (this year, worth €12.50 or more) or signs up to a library in the preceding weeks. This book then serves as a token for travel anywhere in the country. [...]
Indonesia’s second city, Surabaya, came up with a novel way of clearing its streets of plastic waste last autumn: It has been encouraging passengers to trade in trash for bus tickets. While the idea of offering people an incentive to collect recyclable trash is not unusual, giving people a benefit in terms of travel is—especially as the most striking aspect of the scheme is perhaps that the city is not asking for very much. If you want a bus ticket that’s valid for two hours, Surabaya’s transit authorities are asking you to supply just 10 plastic cups or five bottles. [...]
Under normal circumstances, if you demanded that a subway ticket inspector got on their knees to check out your shoes, you’d likely get the police called on you. Not, however, in Berlin over the past year. In January 2018 Berlin’s BVG transit authority launched a limited edition line of sneakers in collaboration with Adidas. The sneakers’ decoration featured a splash of the close-to-iconic psychedelic camouflage print that covers the city’s subway train seats, but that wasn’t the feature that made their $215 cost a bargain. That could be found in the sneakers’ tongues, which were printed with an annual pass for travel across the network.
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