• SNCF: State aid for Eurostar needed within the month to survive (RailTech)
• Ex-TfL Bus Boss Leon Daniels on the National Bus Strategy (FreeWheeling)
• There’s one big problem with electric cars (NYTimes)
• How a mass transit snob became a believer (Urbanist)
• US major rivers as a subway map (CityLab)
• Art Deco’s Impact on Railroads (AmtrakGuy365)
• Estonia’s free public transport did not get drivers out of cars (UrbanMobility)
Check out our new section:
As well as some of our other sections:
- Industry News – updated every business day except Friday
- Podcasts
And some of our most popular articles:
- Schrodinger’s Cab Firm: Uber’s Existential Crisis
- You Hacked – Cyber-security and the railways
- On Our Line Podcast #8: Talking Uber, Lyft and Mobility disruption
Feel we should read something or include in a future list? Email us at [email protected].
Comments and tweets may be monitored for quality and training purposes.
Reconnections is funded largely by our community. Like what we do? Buy us a cup of coffee or visit our shop.
Estonia: I suppose that one of the issues with giving everyone something without charging at the point of use, is that it gets degraded in many (not all) people’s minds as they conflate cost-free with worthless. This happens in the UK when people find their GP service lacking, complain about the BBC or the free buses for pensioners.
One of the most effective Nudge Unit things was that they send out “if you miss this hospital appointment it costs the NHS £163” texts to everyone before their appointments. It shows the service user that their appointment isn’t free.
It would, I guess, be better to tax or fine the usage you don’t want (car travel) and use that to give people who want free train/bus travel monied certificates they can exchange for a annual travel pass. So, in London people would value their free bus/tube travel if it came with an annual “£2708” certificate to hand over!
I suspect that underlying the failure of the Estonia scheme to engineer a modal shift is the fact that public transport was cheaper than car travel even when fares were charged. Those who could afford it were prepared to pay the extra to travel by car for whatever reason. Making public transport free didn’t change that dynamic. What it did do was to allow and encourage those who didn’t want to pay the extra to go by car to travel by public transport more often.
If we want to engineer modal shift from car to public transport it will not be, generally, by adjusting fares, but buy making public transport far more convenient.
The schemes deliver what they promise not necessarily what is intended.
Luxembourg nationally and a German city are also doing this. Many US cities offer free rides in their downtown zone.
If an aim is to transfer car commuters onto transit then they should be targeted:
tax car parking, bus lane priority, peak fare pricing, and tax free worker travel pass.
@Quinlet makes sensible comments.
But it does suggest the value of supporting bus fares as a possible income redistribution mechanism. That’s part of why we have senior citizens bus passes. But there are increasingly other concentrations of poverty with mobility requirements that are potentially at least as important.