Passengers Who Volunteer For Tattoos Get Free Transportation In Austria
By Mikelle Leow, 06 Sep 2023
Photo 239728907 © Gaudilab | Dreamstime.com
The Austrian government has made brazen commuters an offer they can’t refuse remove. A small group of festivalgoers has inked down a deal with the authorities to receive free, unlimited public transit passes valid for a full year—after going ahead to tattoo the word “KlimaTicket” onto their bodies.
Attendees of two music festivals—Electric Love in Salzburg and Frequency in St Pölten—were challenged to get permanent body art done to save up on rail rides all year. Popup tattoo parlors with banners reading, “Aktion geht unter die Haut (action that gets under the skin),” were set up at the venues, beckoning those fueled by music to be equally charged on environmental responsibility by traveling on lower emissions.
This pass is widely used by the general public in Austria and is compatible with numerous forms of transportation. Typically, it would cost just €3 (US$3.22) per day to get around with this ticket, but this adds up to €1,095 (US$1,175) a year. This makes the offer quite appealing to the right audience.
Interested festivalgoers could either have a tattoo of the KlimaTicket logo or a graphic of a KlimaTicket card to be eligible for free transit rides. And while the privilege was only restricted to six people—three from each event—that didn’t stop other guests from volunteering for free tattoos, the Smithsonian Magazine reports.
Images via KlimaTicket
To further etch this promise, the country’s climate minister Leonore Gewessler even got a temporary tattoo, reading, “Gewessler takes the lead,” to get the ball rolling. The initiative is reminiscent of another campaign by Subway in which customers were promised a lifetime’s worth of free food if they inked its logo into their skin.
However, the permanence of this promotion by the Austrian government has left a bitter taste in some mouths. Critics include Henrike Brandstötter, an minister of parliament for the liberal NEOS party, who argued that rewarding people “for putting advertising under their skin” reflected an “unacceptable view of humanity” on the part of the government, as translated by Euronews.
Regardless, Jakob Lambert, managing director of KlimaTicket’s operator One Mobility, tells the Austrian Press Agency (via Smithsonian) that the activation has amassed a great deal of attention from the target group.
No one who volunteered themselves was getting tattoos done for the first time, Lambert recounts, adding that most participants already had several designs on their bodies “and now have one more.”
[via Smithsonian Magazine, Euronews, Austria Press Agency, images via various sources]