The rush-hour subway train glides into the station, the doors snap open and passengers move forward to board. As they enter the crowded carriage, they are met not with a musty mix of human odours, but with the subtle aroma of citrus fruit.

A select few trains on Vienna’s U-bahn are trialling perfumed carriages following complaints that the city’s subway system was unpleasant during the summer, despite widespread air conditioning.

According to Wiener Linien (Vienna Lines), the city’s public transport operator, feedback has been “mixed”. But the fact that Vienna’s biggest public transport debate this summer is over perfumed carriages is evidence of a broader success story.

A dense constellation of trams, buses, trains and subway cars, Vienna’s system is widely regarded as one of the best in the world. And it is remarkably cheap for residents: just a euro a day for those who buy the €365 (£328) annual pass. For comparison, a similar pass is €761 in Berlin, or £2,020 for London zones 1-4.

Berlin is one of a number of German cities looking at copying Vienna’s pricing policy, as municipalities across Europe look for innovative policies that will lower emissions and get more people on to public transport.

The euro-a-day ticket was the brainchild of the former Green deputy mayor of Vienna, Maria Vassilakou, who ran for office in 2010 promising €100 season tickets. Most other politicians thought this was crazy, pointing out that the existing €449 ticket was already cheap by European standards. After a long negotiation, a compromise price of €365 was agreed and launched in 2013. The effects have been considerable.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Annual ticket sales for Austria’s U-bahn have jumped from 321,000 to 822,000 since the introduction of the €365-a-year ticket. Photograph: robertharding/Alamy Stock Photo

“For people with modest incomes the saving really made a difference, and for well-off people it became something you buy it to have it just in case,” said Vassilakou.

Sales of annual tickets are up from 321,000 in 2011 to 822,000 this year. When children and students, eligible for cheaper passes, are added to the total, around 1.1 million of Vienna’s 1.9 million population has a long-term pass.

The extra ticket sales meant that the already generous city funding for transport infrastructure did not have to be increased too much to meet the shortfall. Wiener Linien receives around €700m a year in subsidies. There are no plans to raise the annual ticket price, which has remained static since 2013, even as short-term ticket prices creep up – a daily pass now costs €8.

Using Vienna’s transport system is easy, with short interchanges, minimal distances between stations, and trains or buses that arrive at regular intervals.

“Time as we experience it is not about minutes, it’s about our feelings. People say in Vienna it’s quick. It’s not, it’s just clever,” said Hermann Knoflacher, a professor and urban planning expert who has worked on the city’s transport infrastructure since 1963.

The network is a mix of old and new, and ancient infrastructure forms part of a very modern system. The city’s U-bahn system only began operating in the late 1970s, but still uses the ornate Jugendstil entrance pavilions and sleek platforms – designed by the architect Otto Wagner – that were part of an overground railway network constructed in the late 19th century.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A subway station. Photograph: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo

The 71 tram that rolls along the famous Ringstrasse before a half-hour ride out to Vienna’s vast main cemetery has been operational since it was horse-drawnand coffins were pulled along the tracks at night. “He’s taken the 71” is still a slang term akin to “kick the bucket”. Now, it carries commuters from the suburbs and shuttles groups of tourists between the multiple historical landmarks on the Ring.

But much of the infrastructure is more recent and new stations and routes are still being added. All the U-bahn stations and most of the buses and trams have disabled access. Knoflacher, who has taught a generation of urban planners, said that for years he has made his students spend a day getting around Vienna in a wheelchair. “They never forget that,” he said.

Almost everyone in Vienna lives within a five-minute walk of a public transport stop or station, and a bus or train will be along within three to five minutes, meaning door to ride almost never takes more than 10 minutes, and usually much less.

David Lansky, who works at EY, formerly Ernst & Young, has one of the longest commutes in Vienna, requiring a bus and two U-bahn trains, but he enjoys the 45-minute journey twice a day. “I like to read, or listen to podcasts; it’s me time,” he said. In two years of regular commuting, he did not recall a delay of more than a couple of minutes.

The love of the Viennese for their public transport system is so great that branded merchandise made by the operator has become the latest fashion trend in the city. “I see a lot of Wiener Linien apparel around the university and at parties. Somehow they’ve managed to hype their brand name and make it part of the youth culture here,” said Sophie Spiegelberger, a 20-year-old politics and maths student at the University of Vienna.

The key to the success, said Knoflacher, lies not only in the impressive public transport infrastructure, but in making life more difficult for drivers as well, something Vienna has done gradually over recent decades.

“Cars are like water, they fill any space you give them,” he said. “It’s great that the Germans want to introduce the cheap subway fares, but it’s only part of the solution. If you don’t really go after the cars, it will never work.”

Additional reporting by Adam Urosevic