The blue sphere found in buses, metro and bus stations doesn’t seem to be beckoning as many travellers as politicians had hoped.

Søndagsavisen reports that in the first half of this year only ten percent of all trips made by bus and train were made using rejsekort, the much-criticized electronic travel card.

Based on the calculations by the Danish Transportation Authority, transport minister Magnus Heunicke told the Parliamentary Transport Committee that it was the wish in 2005 for people to have an electronic card, however the numbers show that this is “far from the case”.

Kristian Pihl Lorentzen, transport spokesman for Venstre (the Liberal Party), agrees calling the numbers “shocking low”.

User unfriendly
Many have criticized the travel card saying it is not user-friendly and are victim to large penalties when forgetting to check out. In fact, in this year alone, rejsekort users have coughed up 816,000 kroner in fines. So most travellers simply use other vouchers, old tickets, mobile tickets and season tickets to get around.

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Thomas Boe Bramsen, marketing director for Travel Card A/S, explains that the reason for not having widespread card use is to be “expected when you have not yet phased out punch cards [klippecort] in the metropolitan areas”.

The sale of the punch cards in question are due to be phased out by 9 February 2015 and will be able to be used until 30 June 2015.

Heunecke has given the company a December deadline to provide a plan to solve the problems with the card and then he will decide how to proceed.