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I 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.
ItS Not FreE, YoU StIlL HaVe tO pAy fOR iT sOmeHOw.
Yeah no shit, that's exactly what taxes are for. Providing services to the masses, not giving handouts to the richest.
I wonder who do they think that pays for car infrastructure (gas stations, roads, road patches, gas subsidies, etc.)
I think the criticism is valid, not in favour of cars but in terms of future sustainability. Public transport infrastructure needs investment to keep it growing and improving. There is a risk with a free system that the focus in each budget is the battle around just covering the day to day costs, and the future investment gets put aside constantly as a problem for another day. This is typical behaviour of politicians, and makes the public transport organisations entirely dependent on politicians for their budget.
However that problem applies to a lesser extent with systems that do get revenue from users, it's just that they are less completely reliant on politicians and their yearly budgets. It's ultimately all about political will and a willingness to prioritise transport investment over other public spending.
I do think the scheme is a good thing, I'm just dubious that the political will to sustain it will persist long term. However hopefully this will spread to other European cities and whole countries and so become a normal idea alongside investment for future expansion and upgrades.
What does the battle between investing in the future v. just keeping the day-to-day running have to do with whether the system is (part-)financed through tickets?
I don't see any connection, maybe even the inverse of what you say: Infrastructure needs long-term planning, and having a stable financial framework rather than fickle ticket sales is great for long-term planning.
Good take. Agree completely.
In more general terms, in a market-based society we tend to equate cost with value. For people who buy expensive watches the high price tag is a bonus. Artists seek sponsorship in the form of a Patreon subscription with supposed "perks" that give the buyer an impression of getting better value.
The risk with "free stuff" will always be that it is perceived as having no value and treated accordingly.
That's a good take, it's obviously not perfect and could easily be derailed by shitty planning and politics. But it needs to be done and built upon to secure it in the long run.
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.html
No way, people actually use public transport if it's cheaper than using a car (if you already have one anyway)!?
*surprised Pikachu*
This is only part of the equation, unfortunately - free transit that is of significantly worse in terms of travel time/reliability/accessibility/comfort won't get used at significantly higher rates.
This is why some transit advocates consider free transit to be an inferior use of funds when compared to investments in the system as a whole, which I think is a fair point.
I'd of course like to see both, as ticketing systems contribute negatively to the overall quality of the system (paying for tickets/passing through ticket gates slows down the system, ticket checkers represent an unpleasant ritual in the system).
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...
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.
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.
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.
I believe that's where I learned about the fourth power law as well, yeah!
Woo!
WTYP Fanclub on Lemmy!
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.