The latest city is Montpellier in southern France. EXTRACTS: from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/07/the-guardian-view-on-fare-free-public-transport-good-for-people-as-well-as-the-planet
"In 2013, Tallinn, the Estonian capital, became the largest city in the world to introduce fare-free public transport, financed by the city’s resident tax. Luxembourg’s 640,000 citizens became entitled to the same in 2020. In France, the Observatory of Cities with Fare-Free Transport estimates that 43 towns and cities now offer at least some access without charge. In Germany and Austria, heavy public subsidies on tickets introduced during the cost of living crisis look as if they are here to stay in modified form."
Subsidise passengers not the operators
"The widely adopted £2 bus fare cap scheme, in place in England until the end of this year, is further evidence of a changing zeitgeist. Removing it in 2025 would be a deeply unpopular political move.
"For places like Montpellier, where fares generally finance a smaller proportion of the running costs of the transport network, it is both eminently doable and transformatory. In Dunkirk, where bus services have been funded by tax revenue since 2018, the result has been a boom in usage and perceived service quality, along with a widespread sense that the new system enhances the town’s image."
"Pull and push factors to ensure popular consent and change habits."
"Various studies have pointed out that moves to restrict car usage achieve more reliable results in cutting congestion, carbon emissions and pollution. But the politics of the green transition needs pull as well as push factors to ensure popular consent and change lifelong habits, while inculcating new ones in young people. Reconceiving public transport as a common good similar to health, education and other services can become part of the wider cultural reset that is the task of our times."
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