French city of Montpellier makes public transport free for all residents
French city of Montpellier makes public transport free for all residents
Visitors and tourists will still have to pay 1.60 euro per trip as southern French city becomes latest in Europe to make bus and tram rides free for locals
Cross posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/4701018
Making it free just for residents is an interesting choice. I guess the argument is that they're paying taxes to cover the use while non residents are, but then you have to maintain all of the ticketing infrastructure for much lower revenue. They've also banned taking bikes on the trams as part of this, which isn't great.
For private business the tickets are to fund the business. But for public transport they are never expected to cover the costs of the business.
It is run as a public service, not to make money. The function of tickets is to prevent overcrowding.
That's why in well designed systems, the price is different at rush hour, and for high traffic routes and times.
I don't know anything about montpellier specifically though.
That's why in well designed systems, the price is different at rush hour, and for high traffic routes and times.
Introducing something variable or unpredictable into public transit would probably deter a few people from using it
From an efficiency perspective this makes sense, but I don't like it to be honest. The long distance trains do that here and it's very off putting, although I can understand why - the trains are already usually very overcrowded, long and don't fit in most stations, no funding is available to extend the platforms any further, and companies can't buy newer, denser, faster trains because the railway electrify project is decades late...
As an alternative I'd propose increasing the frequency of the trams if possible, or maybe even use longer trams during those times if the stops are suitably long
It's not too make money but they still need money to run it, and in a lot of places a significant portion of that comes from fares. If they're replacing all of it with money coming from elsewhere then great.
Replace tickets with tap payments, problem solved
Great news everyone! Hopefully the system works well and other cities will follow suit. I know in the USA (in the few places we do have public transit) the argument for keeping fares is always 1.we don't want to pay taxes for that and 2.if we charge that'll keep the vagrants from using it. Two arguments that make no sense at all, 1. We already pay taxes for the public transit, why pay more to actually use it? And 2.anyone who has used public transit knows the fare doesn't keep vagrants out.
I hope New York takes inspiration instead of raising fares.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The French city of Montpellier in southern France became the latest European metropolis to allow all its residents to ride public transport for free.
From Thursday evening, Montpellier residents with a special pass were able to ride trams and buses free of charge in the southern city.
Michael Delafosse, the Socialist mayor of the city of 500,000 people, promised free public transport when he was elected in 2020.
Before the initiative to make public transport free in Montpellier, just 86,000 people had paid subscriptions to use it, according to figures obtained by AFP.
But that figure has tripled to 260,000 subscribers in recent days running up to the launch of the free pass, either in card or smartphone app form.
Last year city residents accounted for 90% of the 39 million euros in public transport ticket sales.
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