WEBVTT
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Language: en

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Luxembourg is a small country.
It's about 50 miles by 35 miles,

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with just over 600,000 people
living in it.

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And here in the capital,
Luxembourg City,

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around 200,000 people
commute into work every day,

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half from outside the country,

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but less than 20% of them
travel by public transit.

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But from Sunday, March 1st,
all public transit in the entire country will be free.

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Pretty soon, there'll be no ticket machines,
unless you want an international ticket.

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There'll be no fare dodgers,
unless you count people

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who are sneaking into the first-class train cabins
that you will still have to pay for.

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And on the face of it, free public transit
seems like an easy decision.

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Get people out of cars
and into buses and trains.

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But it's a little more
complicated than that.

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- We are the country,
besides Qatar,

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with the highest degree of
cars per household, in Luxembourg,

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and we have definitely a big problem,
especially in peak hours,

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with enormous congestion problems.

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We have a problem also that
quality-of-life in our cities, in our villages,

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it's really worsened.

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That comes because
Luxembourg is a country where

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you had not only the highest average
of economic growth in the last 25 years,

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but also our population growth
is the highest in the European Union.

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Having mobility behaviour
that is mainly based on individual cars

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cannot really function anymore,

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and at the end, it's also a problem then
for our economy itself.

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- Making public transit free
is not a new idea.

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There are quite a few cities around the world
who've already done it,

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and a lot of Estonia now has
free public transit for residents.

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Luxembourg, though, is the first country
to abolish fares entirely,

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and partly that's because it can afford to do it.
The country is a small, rich tax haven.

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The thing is, public transit here is
almost free already.

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A ticket valid for a full day on every
bus, tram, and train in the country is €4.

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The whole transit network costs the government
€700 million a year to operate,

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but all the tickets sold
add up to just 10% of that.

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By comparison, London's transit network is
about half-funded by fares.

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So from the Luxembourg
government's perspective,

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there's not actually that much difference
between a €4 day ticket and free transit,

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but "free transit" is the sort of headline
that gets you a lot of good publicity.

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But hey, if transit is free,
why would you want to get around by car?

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Well, it's because
the transit here isn't great.

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It's okay,
by European standards.

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The buses and trains will get you there.
I've had no problems as a tourist,

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but the commuter lines are
already overcrowded in rush hour.

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A lot of the rolling stock is dated,
and there is a litany of complaints

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about the paths they take
and how they deal with breakdowns.

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Driving here, even with the congestion,
is usually quicker and more convenient,

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sometimes even for journeys
directly between city centres.

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- So every year, there's more and more
people moving here,

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and the infrastructure system
is under a lot of strain.

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So the needs are to make it work,
not to make it free.

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There's lots of research on this,
and what comes out over and over again

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is that the fare is not
the main motivating factor.

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The main motivating factor is
comfort, reliability, and safety.

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No one ever knows if the trains are
actually going to be on time.

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It has happened that people are standing
for an hour and a half

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on the platform waiting for the train,
with no substitute buses or anything.

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So that's an extreme case, obviously,
but if one wants to be somewhere on time,

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one has to take this into account,
that these things do happen.

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- The cities who are doing this
investment into public transport,

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into free public transport,

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that's really the bit of cities that,
from a competitive point of view,

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will be, in the world,
the winning cities.

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Even if I say it's free to use,
somebody pays it.

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So at the end, the 700 million euros
will be paid by the taxpayers in general.

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Someone, for example, with minimum income
pays no taxes.

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So he has the public transport,
really, for free,

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but somebody who pays high taxes,
he pays much more.

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- That's an important point:
for someone like me,

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who's a tourist with a travel budget,
€4 for a day pass isn't a big issue,

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but for someone on minimum wage
who has to commute an hour, or two hours

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from wherever housing's affordable,
that makes a big difference.

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- I don't think the key social issue
in Luxembourg is the price of the transit.

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One needs to look at the housing costs.

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The increasing prices of housing
are pushing people to the border regions.

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So it might be financially more sound
to live in Belgium, or France and Germany,

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buy a house, or rent a house,
and buy a couple of cars,

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than it would be to live here in Luxembourg
and use the transit.

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It needs investment,
and it needs investment now. It's behind.

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And so Luxembourg needs to catch up
and plan for the future.

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- You must see the
free public transport additionally

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to the investments
that we are doing

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in the improvement of the network
and the quality of the public transport.

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If you only introduce free public transport,
that will change not very much behaviour.

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It can only function if you do it combined
with a complete strategy

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that will switch from individual mobility
to multi-modality,

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so even including pedestrians, cyclists,

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and if you invest at the same time, a lot of money,
in the infrastructure of public transport,

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so that at the end,
you can combine everything.

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We say, if we built an infrastructure,
we will build it to move people and not to move cars.

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- I'm not saying free transit
is a bad thing.

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I think it's a great idea, personally,

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but having good, frequent,
well-connected transit

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that isn't too crowded to board
is also important.

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The question isn't as binary as
"Should public transit be free?"

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because in a utopia,
of course it would be.

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It would also be autonomous,
zero-emission,

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and it would run from anywhere
to everywhere all the time.

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But until we're in
a post-scarcity society,

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the public are paying one way or another,
either through taxes or fares.

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The more important question is about
planning and long-term investment,

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because if your bus is always late,
and your train's always cancelled,

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it doesn't matter if they're free.