From Brazil to India to Europe, free public transport is gaining momentum
By Simon Pirani, Fare Free London
SEPT. 17, 2024
Free public transport has been introduced, with striking success, in cities around the world in the past three years. Activists will report on how it was done at an event in London on Sunday 29th September.
Brazil has seen an especially rapid expansion of zero-fares transport. At the latest count, more than 5 million people in 116 municipalities have access to it.
Many smaller Brazilian cities introduced free public transport, in response to a decade of motorisation, policy support for private cars and decline of public systems, Daniel Santini, a researcher at the university of Sao Paulo, points out.
At the 29th September event, organised by Fare Free London, Santini will give an update (on a video link).
Zero-fares policies always and everywhere win support as a social justice measure.
In June last year, the state government of Karnataka, India, introduced free public transport for women, in the teeth of right-wing opposition – and recently registered the 2 billionth free journey.
An activist from Karnataka will also speak at the London event (by video).
Closer to home, in France, 2 million people have access to 38 zero-fares schemes counted by the Observatory of Cities with Free Transport. Montpellier, with a population of half a million, became the largest fare-free city in December last year.
Jerome Serodio of the National Coordination of Collectives for Free Public Transport in France – which sees public transport as “a common good, fighting isolation and individualism” – will address the London event, too.
That is not all. Fares have also been abolished in two European capital cities (Tallinn, Estonia, and Luxemburg), and cities in the USA, China and elsewhere.
In 2021, researchers at the Rapid Transition Alliance attributed the international shift towards free public transport, in part, to a bounce-back from the Covid-19 pandemic, when health authorities had advised against using public transport.
Politically, free public transport is embraced by community groups and environmentalists who oppose the intensification of car use on social, health and climate grounds.
We launched Fare Free London in February, with the support of groups such as the Stop the Silvertown Tunnel coalition, Greener Jobs Alliance and Tipping Point, who have campaigned against road-building and for public transport investment, as a way to tackle climate change.
Once we started campaigning, we found common cause with people who are already demanding action to cut the exceptionally high cost of public transport in London (for example, £15.90 for a Zone 1-4 day travelcard).
Citizens UK, for example, are calling on City Hall to grant free bus travel to asylum seekers. In meetings with refugees, Citizens UK asked what their priority needs were: free transport came second to food for families.
“Mothers and young children have to walk long distances to go to primary school,” as children travel free by bus but their parents do not, the group reports. “People who are unwell have to walk long distances to access healthcare because of the cost of travel,” and English language classes have become inaccessible for some.
Extortionate fares are also an issue for students: a survey conducted last year by the student union at the University of the Arts in London found that the high cost of accommodation has driven students to live outside the city and commute – which costs £71 to100 a week.
As part of its cost of living campaign, the union has called on the university to fund 16-25 railcards for new students.
Unemployed people and other claimants are also trapped by high fares, a representative of Haringey Claimant Justice told a public meeting on the zero fares campaign, organised in July by the Haringey Solidarity Group.
Fare Free London has won the backing of trade union bodies representing workers on London Underground. The Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union’s London transport regional council voted in May to support the campaign for free public transport; so did RMT branches covering the Bakerloo line and the eastern section of the Central line.
Not only would free public transport open the city to all, regardless of income. Combined with effective policies to reduce car travel, it could strengthen London’s efforts to tackle air pollution and reverse its setbacks in tackling greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
In 2022, London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan announced that the volume of traffic, measured by vehicle-kilometres driven, needs to fall by at least 27% to meet climate targets.
Climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change research and Imperial College argue that this reduction is clearly insufficient, even if it is a step in the right direction.
Transport researchers have long insisted that, to decarbonise transport, free public services are the logical complement to measures that discourage excessive driving.
Fare Free London hopes to popularise that argument. And we hope to continue building links with campaigners elsewhere in the UK, which lag behind London in terms of investment in public transport and the level of services.
Since launching our campaign in February, amid the overwhelmingly positive responses, we often get asked: “how would you pay for that?”
Our short answer is: if the political will is there, the money can be found. After all, most of the world’s big cities rely far less on fare income than London does, to fund public transport: they use corporate taxes and levies to make businesses pay for systems that effectively subsidise them.
The longer answer, set out in our campaign briefing, is that there are sources of funding (i) that could be raised now by the London mayor, if he so decided, and (ii) that could be added with the support of national government.
Potential sources of funding in London listed in the briefing are: road user charging; land value capture (for example, the Community Infrastructure Levy used to finance the Elizabeth line); other property taxes; and a payroll tax similar to the one that provides about half of the Paris transport system’s revenue.
Measures national government could use, the briefing argues, include: legislation to widen local government’s revenue-raising powers; ending the freezing and cutting of fuel duty (which the Office for Budget Responsibility says cost the Treasury £80 billion in 2010-23); wealth taxes; and a clampdown on corporate tax evasion.
Now we have a Labour government, with a fiscal policy that looks like Austerity Mark Two, our battle over investment in public transport, and the potential to make it free, will merge with other battles about funding public services, and funding effective climate policies.
Let’s unite, and mobilise around these issues.
The Winning Free Public Transport event on Sunday 29th September is open to all, and free to attend. 11.0am-4.0pm at the Waterloo Action Centre, 14 Baylis Road, London SE1 7AA, and on zoom. Please register here.
In addition to the international speakers, we will hear from Lisa Hopkinson (Transport for Quality of Life); Daniel Randall (RMT, London underground, in a personal capacity); Ellie Harrison (Get Glasgow Moving); Drew Pearce (co-author of key article in Nature on London transport sector decarbonisation); and activists from Fare Free London, trade unions, community groups and others; plus plenty of time for discussion.
Simon Pirani is honorary professor at the University of Durham, and writes a blog at peoplenature.org.
Main image: c/o author. Inset images: First: Montpellier Tram. Author: Zairon, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Second: Luxembourg, tram. Author: GilPe, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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