... public transportation was free?

If you hear the words public transportation, what comes to your mind? Personally, I think about expensive tickets, empty busses and spending more time to reach my destination than I would need to. But what if public transportation was free for everyone?

Especially if you think about climate change, it would seem like a logical conclusion to try to make more people choosing public transportations like busses or trains instead of their car, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Promoting public transportation would also have other benefits like reducing noise pollution, overall consumption of oil and petrol and also litter, as there wouldn’t be any tickets. Other advantages of more people taking public transportation would be less congestion on the streets for people who need to drive, a reduction of asthma or other illnesses linked to automobile generated pollution and a more efficient labor market as it makes it easier to find a job for people who don’t own a car. This would also contribute to fighting poverty in a long term.

Some cities, like Tallinn, the capital of Estonia or the Belgian city Hasselt already offer free public transportation. Luxembourg announced that it will make all public transportation free by 1^st of March 2020 and also Germany thinks about making their public transport fare-free. There are also fare-free transport means you might not think about directly, like free city bikes for a certain amount of time or the free Interrail Ticket for every 18 year old citizen the European Union is discussing. So as a free public transportation system apparently works out, why is it not more common?

Experiments have shown that free public transport mostly attracts people who would otherwise walk or bike, but not those who drive. Another report states that fare-free transport would also appeal many people with negative behavior like vandalism which would cause more costs for the state. The report came to the conclusion that the concept would work out in ‘small transit systems in fairly homogenous communities’ but not in bigger cities.

Another point to be considered is also the efficiency of the transportation. People are willing to pay for fast transportation, for example by choosing to take an Uber, even though taking the train or metro would be cheaper.

I think everybody of us would like to have free public transportation, and it has also many advantages. But I think in order to make public transportation in general more attractive, states would also need to improve the whole infrastructure. It is also still difficult for big cities to come up with ways of funding, as they mostly already struggle to keep the system intact with charging fares.