Fare Free Public Transport Meeting

On Wednesday 24th March 2021, the Climate Action Network West Midlands will be hosting an online meeting about Fare-Free Public Transport for Birmingham and the West Midlands. We will be doing this to draw attention to the growing global movement for FFPT, and to argue for Birmingham City Council and Transport for West Midlands to initiate a feasibility study about adopting such a scheme.

Currently, about 100 cities around the world have full FFPT systems. In Europe they are located mainly inFrance and Poland, but we should not overlook Tallinn (serving 430,000 people) or Luxembourg (serving over 600,00 people). While the Covid crisis has severely disrupted the use of public transport, we feel that the planning for the extension of the global FFPT movement into this area should begin now, and not wait until we are in a post-Covid situation to extend the scheme to our city and region.

As CANWM, our main concern is with reducing carbon dioxide emissions to net zero in Birmingham by2030, as part of the Climate Emergency response. We note that surface transport makes up 28% of the city’s CO2 total, and although the Birmingham Transport Plan proposes measures to deal with air pollution and congestion and other adverse factors, we feel that it does not go nearly far enough. We need to shift a large proportion of the cars off the road, and the best way to tempt motorists out of their private cars would be a full FFPT system.

Our vision is for a public transport system that is truly public, and free at the point of use. This would go a long way to curb NO2 and particulate matter pollution, congestion, delays, and accidents as well as dealing with our preoccupation with obtaining a net-zero carbon city.

Electric Vehicles represent a move away from fossil fuels, but they are currently expensive and would do

nothing to reduce congestion. They also emit particulate pollution from tyres and brakes and would require vast amounts of electricity if widely used. It would be far preferable to move to a social mass transport system, with electric or hydrogen-powered buses complementing increased access for walkers and cyclists.

Local train and trams should also be part of the FFPT mix, but we should note in passing the remarkably high cost of extending the tram network and consider that the investment should go into FFPT instead.

Similarly, we note the vast sums being made available for HS2 and a planned expansion of the airport.

There is not a lack of resources for transport investment, it is a question of priorities.

Birmingham City Council’s Climate Emergency plan, adopted on January 12th this year, acknowledges that a feasibility study looking into FFPT would be acceptable, but the council will not do it by itself. We would like Transport for West Midlands to undertake a parallel study, but being an unaccountable body, we have little purchase with them.

Therefore, we are inviting you to register for the online meeting on Wednesday March 24th, 19.00 to 20.30 hours GMT, and take part in the discussion led by Wojciech Keblowski. Wojciech is a critical urban geographer working on transport and alternatives to capitalism and is based at the Free University of Brussels.