Public transport in Leipzig for 34C3: Discount ticket pre-sale open

For the first time in the history of CCC, Congress will not be held in a downtown area but a little further out. We had to relocate to Messe

Leipzig this year. This comes with a number of challenges. Moving conveniently between downtown and the 34C3 location is one of these challenges that we put a lot of thought and energy in. Hotel capacities at the fair grounds are limited, the food options might not suit everyone, the long distance trains arrive in downtown: There is a multitude of reasons why it should not be a hassle to hop between 34C3 and downtown Leipzig.

Bringing your own car to get to the Congress might enable you to bring the larger volumes of stuff for your assemblies and have more flexibility in coordinating travel times. But using that car to travel around in Leipzig is doomed to produce jams and frustration looking for in-city parking space. If you come by car, please leave it at the fair ground parking lot. We have plenty of space there. But do not use it for traveling into town. Also, we always strive to reduce the usage of combustion engines where possible. This is why we avoided chartering shuttle busses, which would have been a cheap but also dirty and stinky solution.

Fortunately, the City of Leipzig runs a tram line from Congress to the city. To cope with the surge of passengers during the otherwise quiet time between Christmas and New Year, they made us an commercial offer to operate longer trains. Using highly scientific methods we figured out at what times they would need to operate more often and that they would need to continue service during night. The new tram line 16E will run in a 20/30 min interval during the night, effectively providing a clean, electrically driven, properly heated shuttle with your fellow hackers to downtown. And the best is: It is starting directly at the 34C3 entrance.

Unfortunately, there’s a real price tag for this conveniently expanded service. When we set the 34C3 ticket prices, we did not know the actual cost and thus could not include it in the calculation back then. But now we were able to strike a mutually beneficial deal with LVB, the public operator of the tram lines: All 34C3 participants can purchase a heavily subsidized four-day pass valid for the whole city of Leipzig (zone 110) for just 16,70 €. No strings attached. This saves you more than 10 Euro compared to regular LVB tickets. And the more tickets are sold by us, the lower our cost contribution of operating the clean and safe night tram.

Sounds good? They are available from today here:
https://tickets.events.ccc.de/34c3nv/.

A preliminary ticket can be downloaded as soon as your order is marked paid. You can turn it into the real-thing ™ at 34C3’s cash desk while getting your wristband.

There’s a lot of maddening tax issues involved to get that working. So unfortunately, we cannot accept credit card payments on those tickets, which is unfortunate since foreign participants would profit the most from not having to care about subtle nuances of German public transportation. So we hope that foreigner traveling in groups can pool their tickets and have friendly hackerspaces in Germany handle the purchase for them. Use the hashtag #34C3Patenbrigaden to find help.