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Should public transport be free?

25 comments

stockholm-undergroundStockholm underground trains between Slussen and Gamla Stan. Photo: Jan E Svensson/KanalSL (CC: BY-NC)

Recently the ticket prices for public transportation in Stockholm were raised with more than 10 percent,which gave new fuel to an ever-present discussion.
Is public transport (in general, and Stockholm’s in particular) too expensive? (A monthly card is now at 790 kronor, about 88 Euro.) Is it really more expensive than in other places, if one takes into account the large area that the Stockholm public transport system covers? What’s most important, the price or the efficiency? And so on.

Storstockholms Lokaltrafik, which runs the public transports in Stockholm, argues that Stockholm with its surroundings already has 2 million inhabitants. In order to serve them and the 35 000 new persons that move here every year we will need to extend the public transport system, and that will cost quite a lot -  33 billion kronor (about 3,7 billion Euro) to be exact. Half of that money will come from the raised fares.

Passengers’ associations, environmental organisations and public transport activists, on the other hand, argue that raising the fares will make less people use buses and metro – which will have a negative impact on the environment.
The network Planka, propagating for free public transports, even argues that all those who make less then 40 000 kronor per month (about 4500 Euro) would benefit by letting a tax raise finance the public transportation entirely.

Anyway, there’s no lack of creativity in how to oppose this price increase.  One example is the Facebook page (in Swedish)where more than 8000 persons have joined the idea of organising a “citizens’ busline” through Stockholm for one day during the coming Sunday.
Two buses will bring anyone who wants, free of charge, from the outskirts of the city into the center, where there will be speakers and discussions about public transport.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 15, 2011

  • Pol – Croatia

    Considering roughly the area Stockholm covers the price of public transportation in my town is (strangely) almost exactly the same (The IV. zone = 670 kn ~ 89,33 €). Of course, certain categories like pupils and retired people have considerable discounts.

    Since soon we will have parliamentary elections, as well as final voting for EU accession, I heared recently there was call for ideas that would be integrated in some party programmes. The prize was 2000 € and the winner’s proposition was exactly the free public transport. He (or she) suggested to cover the buses with commercials to pay for it, which we already considerably have (!?). Personaly, i disagree with such an idea, because it creates disorder on streets and makes poor image of the city, especially when you see entire bus covered with it. On the other hand the compensation for such social horror (depending on visual quality of commercial) is max. 1000 Euros per month, per entire inner and outer surfaces of the single bus, which (i roughly calculate) could theoreticaly cover only about 20 % of that service cost.

    The fact is every action, even not doing nothing, costs something even when money is not directly involved. I think, calculating a fair price is very important if suistanability is to be maintained. Maybe, we could have on the ticket stated real price of something and the discounted one and what’s the purpose of it.

  • Sara Jeswani

    Thanks for your impressive calculations, Pol!I find the idea about printing out the “real” price and the subventions on price tags excellent. It would be a good reminder about that the taxes we pay go back to us in different ways.

  • Monica-USA

    In the big city  that I  live by which is Seattle, Washington there are different Zones for the buses. Zone 1 which is  located in the heart of the city it is free to ride all over Zone 1 and then for each Zone after that there is a small charge for each Zone. When you are transferring  between different Zones you can get a special ticket that if you use  it within an hour you don’t have to pay extra and that helps keep the costs  reasonable when using the public buses.

  • Sara Jeswani

    Interesting! I imagine this keeps the number of vehicles down in the city centre?

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  • http://www.edinburghremovals.com/ Removals Edinburgh

    It’s useful for the medal class people, because they are not effort high price for the traveling. So that government make this type of policy, there are many other policy also available like pass system.