Public transport in Stockholm and the pass

What is in the pass and what is not

Experience says this distinction causes more misunderstandings than anything else about the product, so let us be clear right at the start:

Included in the All-Inclusive Pass are the Stockholm Hop-On Hop-Off Bus and the Stockholm Hop-On Hop-Off Boat. Both are sightseeing products: fixed loops that work their way round the sights, with commentary and on a tourist timetable. Then there are the excursion boats proper: canal tours, archipelago trips, the boat trip to Drottningholm.

Not included is SL, which means everything Stockholmers themselves travel on: the Tunnelbana, the city buses, the Pendeltåg out into the region, the tram lines and the Pendelbåtar across the water. For those you need a ticket of your own, which you buy in the SL app. The Djurgårdsfärjan, the ferry to the museum island, is an SL product too, not a pass product.

When you can do without one

Stockholm's historic core is compact. From Stortorget in Gamla Stan past Storkyrkan and the palace, the way leads over Norrbro to Kungsträdgården; Riddarholmen Church lies a short detour to the west of it. Both are a comfortable walk. The Nobel Prize Museum on Stortorget, The Royal Armoury (Livrustkammaren) in the palace cellars and The Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities all lie within that circle, all three in the All-Inclusive Pass.

Beyond that, the Stockholm Hop-On Hop-Off Bus covers the most important stops and goes out to Djurgården as well. For a pure sightseeing round it is often enough, as long as you fit in with its timetable.

When you need one

The moment you leave the city centre, going without a travel ticket gets tiresome, and you leave Stockholm behind faster than you might think:

• Djurgården carries the highest density of destinations in the whole city, with The Vasa Museum, Skansen, Gröna Lund Amusement Park, Nordiska Museet, Vrak, The Viking Museum, SPRITMUSEUM and ABBA The Museum. The island is walkable from the centre, but it is a long way; most people take the tram, a bus or the Djurgårdsfärjan.
• Fotografiska and the viewpoints on Södermalm lie beyond the lock, and SkyView Stockholm at the Avicii Arena in Johanneshov is far to the south.
• Millesgården Museum on Lidingö, Tekniska and The National Maritime Museum in the north-east, the Swedish Museum of Natural History at Frescati: all of them Tunnelbana or bus rides.
• Drottningholm Palace, Gripsholm Castle, Skokloster Castle, Tom Tits Experiment in Södertälje and The Gustavsberg Porcelain Museum lie outside the city. Some you reach on an included excursion boat, others only by Pendeltåg, bus or car.

In practice that means: if you take the pass for two days or more and want to include the destinations outside the old town, plan for an SL ticket from the start. It is a modest amount, but it belongs in the sums when you compare the pass with single tickets. The price page picks this up in its worked example.

The airport is a case of its own

The connections from Stockholm Arlanda into the city are covered neither by the pass nor in full by an ordinary SL city ticket: the Arlanda Express is a product of its own, so are the airport coaches, and even the Pendeltåg service via Arlanda carries a surcharge for the airport station. If you arrive by ferry from Helsinki or Tallinn, you get off at Värtahamnen and need an SL ticket for that first stretch into the city as well.