As countries look to increase public transport use, experts explain why making buses, trams and trains free may not be a ‘magic wand’ to solve the problem.
Luxembourg recently celebrated three years of free public transport. And, according to the people who live there, it has been a resounding success.
As countries look to encourage citizens to ditch their cars to reduce carbon emissions, can Luxembourg’s success be repeated across Europe?
“The quality of public transport needs to change completely,” said Francois Bausch Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Mobility and Public Works and Defense of Luxembourg.
“There is no magic wand. It is not just one form of transport that will solve all our problems, but instead we must be truly multimodal, we must mix them.”
How has Luxembourg changed its transport network?
Bausch explained that the country decided to make public transport free for two reasons: to give everyone fair access and to encourage debate and awareness around a decade of innovation in its mobility system.
In 2013 when Bausch first took his post, time of traffic volume is a daily occurrence in the Luxembourg City center. Now there is none thanks to increased use of the tram system and a restructuring of the way its streets function.
The tram has exclusive right of way and has priority at crossings so is never stuck in a traffic jam. This combined with the fact that it is free encourages more people to use it. Bausch sees this as a measure of the success of Luxembourg’s transport innovation.
Cars has not completely disappeared and the country still has the highest car ownership per household in Europe. About 230,000 people cross the border into Luxembourg every day for work and 75 percent of these trips are made by car.
“You shouldn’t argue against something, but for something,” Bausch said.
“I’m not making rules against cars, but for another mobility system where the car has its place.”
Will making public transport free encourage more people to use it?
Making public transport free is not the answer either. It works in a rich country like Luxembourg but for others, the goal should be to make it cheap, easy to use and accessible.
A recent Greenpeace report on public transport across Europe says that reducing prices is one of the “easiest and fastest ways” to encourage people to use it. It has to cost less than running a car to make it work.
And public transport in Luxembourg isn’t really free for most people.
“Obviously it’s paid for through general taxation and because people who pay more taxes actually don’t have free access to transportation, they don’t pay directly through their taxes,” Bausch said.
“But the examples, those who earn nothing or very little, they are the ones who pay no taxes or have very few direct taxes, they really get it for free.”
When it comes to price reduction, Greenpeace reports highlights other potential funding sources such as transferring money from fossil fuel subsidies, taxes on airline tickets or removing VAT on tickets.
Are there other ways to encourage more use of public transport?
Another key factor in getting people to stop using their cars is how easy it is to navigate transport networks.
“You can build public transport for free and it can derail very quickly afterwards because there is no infra[structure] linked here,” said Herald Ruitjers, director of DG Move, the European Commission body responsible for transport in the EU.
“There is no ticketing linked to it, no combination between the different modes and connection between them and you, you have nothing.”
Change in Luxembourg has gone a long way more than free transportation, says Bausch. In the last few years, the country has been investing around €500 per citizen per year in modernizing and expanding the train network, for example.
“We are investing four, five, six times more in the network, in the quality of the rail network than all the other countries in Europe. And obviously, we have also completely changed the bus system, the national bus that we have.”
“If you want people to change their habits, you have to make sure the alternative really works,” he added.
Why should we switch to public transport instead of cars?
Free or not, the main goal is to get more people to use public transport. But why, if the future is electric car?
“Public transport is many times more efficient than individual transport,” explains Ruitjers.
“Individual cars consume, for example, about seven times more electricity. I am now talking about electric vehicles for the future than, for example, a train or a tram or a metro.”
He said this means that even in the future when we are fully decarbonised, we will still have to rely on public transport for capacity and energy efficiency.
“To find a balance between what is needed for us to have a livable planet and what is needed to also ensure that this can be something that, I would say, society can tolerate for everyone,” concluded Ruitjers.
Watch the video above to find out more about how Europe can transform its public transport.
