Källö-Knippla ... and I believe free car ferries are a bad idea.

Today we sailed quite efficiently, in my previous post we came from Larvik and crossed Skagerak/Kattegat in the direction of Gothenburg, today we entered "E6" at Marstrand, and then we stopped for the night at a small island with the name Källö-Knippla. I always found those places charming and inviting ... quite much because I believed they were car-free societies. After all, getting cars to and from such islands are expensive and time-consuming, and there are not much need of cars on such a small island. Well, I was wrong ... very wrong. I've rarely seen so many cars as on Källö-Knippla. There were cars and parking places everywhere.

It appears that those islands have free car ferries. Those ferries won't take you anywhere else than to the road at the neighbour island ... and a short drive from there is the next ferry terminal where one can take ferry to the mainland. Probably just to ... the road, and nothing else. So, the cheapest and easiest way to get to and from the island is efficiently driving. It's a big subsidy encouraging people to fill up the island with cars.

I'm slightly subscribing to the idea that public transport should be for free - at least outside the peak hours - because the marginal cost of carrying one extra passenger is typically very close to zero, because the cost and disadvantages of collecting fares are quite high, and because it would tilt people from car driving to public transport. Oh well, the last point is admittedly quite subjective ... I just don't like cars.

Consider if they had a passenger ferry service for free, carrying passengers not just to some road connection but to some bus terminal, train station or metro station. Would people have bothered filling up the island with cars in such a case? I bet not.

Anyway, it was a nice place. Here is a photo of the harbour, my boat in the background