Public transport rises to the Olympus of the common goods

Incentives to use public transport are clearly on the rise. Some local and national governments are taking bold steps in that direction, using a powerful lever: making public transportation completely free or very cheap. For instance, mid-sized French cities such as Montpellier in the South and Dunkirk in the North have embraced the free-transport-for-all approach. This may be tougher to implement in bigger cities, where transport funding relies more heavily on ticketing. Some other free schemes apply only to specific times such as week-ends, or target specific groups such as youth.

Other European cities already introduced free public transport, and in 2020 Luxembourg became the first country in the world to eliminate fares on all public transport. Last summer, in an attempt to tackle a mix of post-pandemic recovery, energy crisis and high inflation, Spain, Germany and France introduced free train tickets for young people. Germany and Spain have afterwards maintained free or very cheap rates for short and medium-distance nationwide travel, excluding high-speed trains.  

It is noteworthy that Germany, in addition to introducing their “climate ticket” (an unlimited pass for short and medium-distance train travel, priced at 49 euros per month), is aggressively investing in the renovation of their rail network. To be sure, those are huge investments – 80 billion euros in Germany till 2030, 100 billion euros in France till 2040 – but they are critical to addressing all facets of the equation.

Besides the social and economic direct benefits, these policies help reduce GHG emissions showing that, as in many dimensions of human behaviours, in the face of the climate crisis, successful change will most probably happen not by exclusively forbidding or restricting polluting mobility, but rather when reinforcing more sustainable forms of mobility. It is all about rolling out policies that encourage public and low-carbon transportation alternatives, for local and medium-distance travel, increasingly considering sustainable mobility a common good as vital as education, health or security for a good, healthy life on a healthy planet.  

For a long time, cost and affordability have been significant inhibitors to public transportation uptake. This is why the new policies already mentioned are so welcomed by the public, which is increasingly using public transport after the pandemic usage crisis. Such initiatives are particularly important for low-income segments of our societies for whom transportation to work or study represents a significant share of their monthly expenses. They also are critical in providing more and better alternatives to car transportation, in rural areas that depend heavily or exclusively on it.

Nevertheless, all is not about costs, but also about how each of us uses transport. Favouring a mindset and behavioural change is especially important among the youth, and that is why many of those public transport low fares incentives are targeted at them.  

More generally and looking to transport through the lenses of wider mobility, while train gets a lot of the limelight these days, we should not forget the importance of making various forms of active mobility and electro-mobility such as walking and e-bicycling safer and easier in urban centres. Also ride-sharing and EV infrastructure needs to become denser in rural areas.  

Although public transportation certainly needs to have an increasingly important role in how we move, as mobility experts have been advocating for a long time, it is the combination of solutions that provides genuine answers to people and goods mobility needs, with the lower cost and minimal carbon footprint.  

Beyond cost, we can only encourage local and national policymakers to continue addressing the greater inhibitors of a wider use of public transportation. Those vary a lot from one specific region or city to the next, but generally, they include:

The challenge is therefore in the number of those inhibitors and in the need for a comprehensive and coordinated approach between different stakeholders, including governments, transportation authorities, and urban planners. But that is a challenge that is made both more urgent and more acceptable with the growing awareness among the public about the climate emergency and the need for sustainable mobility.  

The momentum is here and needs to be accelerated!

ARTICLE AUTHORSHIP: 10 Billion Solutions – Climate & Sustainability Communications  You are invited to use and reproduce this article published under Creative Commons license CC BY.

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