Free in Luxemburg for 4 years. Admittedly not all countries have fiscal havens revenues to fund this
https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/living/mobility/public-transport.htmlI lived there to go to university at the beginning of the year. It was crazy to have my free card, the administration was so nice.
Montpellier is not perfect but they are trying and are in the process of succeeding. Urbanization is top notch with many green public spaces, libraries, and everything is cyclable.
They also cracked down on cars in the city center. No wonder why Montpellier is one of the best city to live in / study.
I just had a brainwave that I would like to see data on…
It is obvious that use of public transport will soar when it is free, but how much does car use decline at the same time?
If it is enough to significantly reduce road ware, then you can take money from that budget and use to finance public transport.
I wonder however if the reduced car use will also result in lower income from taxes from petrol sales and road tax…
I believe some studies from Tallinn indicated that the primary effect was increased utilization from existing transit riders, unfortunately.
In any case, due to the Fourth power law, practically all road wear is caused by freight vehicles.
Oh yeah, I remember now, there was an early WTYP episode about a bridge collapse where they spoke about road wear.
So once again, rail is the best over land transport mode.
I believe that’s where I learned about the fourth power law as well, yeah!
Rail is expensive, though. BRTs are 2-4 times cheaper than light rails.
Rail is a very big upfront investment, but it lasts for longer, all but eliminates the need to actively handle fuel, (you still need a few diesel locos to deal with maintenance) and have an effectively unlimited fuel range.
Buss Rapid Transit (thanks for making me google that btw) is not a bad idea, but since that is basically a trackless tram with way worse capacity and higher pollution, I don’t really see the point other than a temporary lines to determine viabillity of a new tram line.
I know you are about to dig into me regarding the pollution and the range of busses.
So, let me break down my argument.
Pollution, a bus has a much shorter service life than trains and trams, they also have a much lower capacity, this means that you not only need more busses at the start, you also need to replace them much more frequently. This includes hybrids, battery busses, trolly busses and any other kind of bus. So that is using way more resources over time, and causes way more waste over time.
Out of the busses I mentioned above, I want to put special focus on battery busses.
THEY BE HEAVY, MAN!
Battery busses are idiotic, the batteries weigh a shitloaf and it has already caused issues with both roads and busses, where the new busses our local transit authority bought have been banned from driving the route they were supposed be used on due to road and bridge dammage from their weight.
Heavy vehicles cause vastly more dammage to roads and infrastructure than lighter busses.
They also have limited range and need to be recharged at a stop, this also reduces their usefullness, as they are locked in to charge.
“But what about fast charging?”
Sure, that exists and is working, while significantly increasing the wear on the batteries, thus reducing the life time further.
That means we gotta built reproccessing facilities for old batteries to get rebuilt, which means disassembling big batteries with a huge energy potential, and work with toxic substances creating a lot of health risks: https://www.alsym.com/blog/lithium-based-batteries-are-toxic-from-start-to-finish/
This means that reprocessing will either be expensive (reprocessing domestically with oversight) or cheap and unethical (outsourcing to countries with less oversight where labour is cheap and and safety standards are not always followed).
Hybrid busses makes more sense since they have a smaller battery to assist the normal engine, this means that the batteries does not run the entire bus constantly, but they vastly bring down fuel emmisions, and are way less heavy, the batteries lasts longer causing less waste.
Trolly busses is the best bus, light, unlimited range, causes less waste and is over all a fantastic way to implement busses.
What remains is the capacity problem, trains and even trams are way, way more space for passengers, so you need fewer vehicles and last way longer so you don’t need to replace them as often, which is even better.
Hey, excuse me for the late answer, I was a bit busy, and wanted to have more time to read your comment.
Rail has some downsides with respect to maintenance: very few companies manufacter them, so maintenance costs are far higher. The required use of specialized tracks Aldo make these operations more complex, while a BRT can use normal roads if needed.
For me, underground metro systems are the better solution, then BRT then light rail, but this depends a lot on the realities of the cities: geography, budget, political will, etc.
I’m currently reading The BRT planning guide, and have been enjoying it. I think you’ll do as well, as it discusses some nuances of public transport systems in specialized tracks (BRT, light rails and heavy rails) with real life examples, in a very friendly way for non-experts. I used to think metro is the obvious solution, but the book has been really opening my mind of a more complex reality. It has a slight bias in favor of BRTs tho, but the discussion is very interesting anyway.
Wouldn’t existing transit raiders already be paying for a transit pass anyway?
It depends. Some occasional transit riders may not have passes, and where they previously would have for example walked or biked they may now have opted for free transit. Some systems also lack passes, instead opting for single tickets only.
Induced (and latent) demand still holds. So if someone is enticed out of a car by this, they’ll likely be replaced by another driver.
And in the case of enticing walkers and bikers into transit, nothing is really gained, and it might actually have a negative public health effect.
If you want to reduce car traffic, restricting it is the way to go—price signals on driving and parking work well, as do restrictions on where you can drive and park.
And to get people to use transit, it has to be efficient—not stuck in car traffic, frequent enough, reliable and reasonably direct. And of course, pricing is important as well.
So correct policy will vary by location and situation. E.g. if transit is already jam-packed, reducing the price will be the wrong way to budget; capacity increases should be the top priority. But if the other metrics are good but ridership kind of lacking, dropping the price should improve the ridership. It ain’t exactly rocket science, but there’s also no silver bullet.
