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Luxembourg To Become First Country To Make All Public Transport Free (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Luxembourg is set to become the first country in the world to make all its public transport free. Fares on trains, trams and buses will be lifted next summer under the plans of the re-elected coalition government led by Xavier Bettel, who was sworn in for a second term as prime minister on Wednesday. Luxembourg City, the capital of the small Grand Duchy, suffers from some of the worst traffic congestion in the world. It is home to about 110,000 people, but a further 400,000 commute into the city to work. A study suggested that drivers in the capital spent an average of 33 hours in traffic jams in 2016. While the country as a whole has 600,000 inhabitants, nearly 200,000 people living in France, Belgium and Germany cross the border every day to work in Luxembourg.
Luxembourg has increasingly shown a progressive attitude to transport. This summer, the government brought in free transport for every child and young person under the age of 20. Secondary school students can use free shuttles between their institution and their home. Commuters need only pay about $2.27 for up to two hours of travel, which in a country of just 999 sq miles (2,590 sq km) covers almost all journeys. Now, from the start of 2020 all tickets will be abolished, saving on the collection of fares and the policing of ticket purchases. The policy is yet to be fully thought through, however. A decision has yet to be taken on what to do about first- and second-class compartments on trains.
Luxembourg has increasingly shown a progressive attitude to transport. This summer, the government brought in free transport for every child and young person under the age of 20. Secondary school students can use free shuttles between their institution and their home. Commuters need only pay about $2.27 for up to two hours of travel, which in a country of just 999 sq miles (2,590 sq km) covers almost all journeys. Now, from the start of 2020 all tickets will be abolished, saving on the collection of fares and the policing of ticket purchases. The policy is yet to be fully thought through, however. A decision has yet to be taken on what to do about first- and second-class compartments on trains.
If you go for something like 5 bucks a day gets you 1st class, you'll once again need policing, clearly defeating some of the point.
If you do it on a first come, first serve basis, I guarantee it won't take one week for the first physical encounters to happen over a 1st class seat...
33 hours a year in traffic jams on average? If you make 10 trips a week for 50 weeks that's 500 trips per year. 33 hours / 500 trips is abou 4 minutes per trip stuck in traffic. That's "some of the worst traffic in the world"?
Probably not but I didn't get that meaning from the article.
Collecting may have cost only 30 cents of that, however imagine how much time and effort is spent by everyone getting the ticket. Also calculate what it costs to make sure nobody cheated.
And then factor in a potential of more people using public transportation instead of private, thus relieving streets.
Not to mention tourism will like this, too...
Even if you don't use public transport it benefits you by reducing traffic.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Welcome to civilization.
Because TAXPAYERS in Luxembourg overwhelmingly people of the rest of EU, rather than its own citizens. Their primary means of income is providing safe haven for tax evasion for large companies that want an office within EU and all the perks that come with it.
There's a reason why the current head of EU Commission and former PM of Luxembourg has earned himself a nickname "tax evader in chief". It's easy to pay for large array of benefits to a microstate worth of people when you can fund it via providing safe haven for large multinationals.
If you're an actually productive rather than parasitic economy, the picture looks very different and perks like these don't scale well.
It's actually not that strange.
I'm in Canada, and I think like most of the world, public transit is subsidized. Whatever the number is. 30%-70% is covered by general taxation.
It's really not unthinkable to just make it free since you're already paying almost half the cost anyways. If a city is already subsidizing transit by $1 billion, and can make it free for $2 billion, it doesn't seem that crazy.
Then of course, there's the saving in terms of payment systems, inspectors, fares, security systems... whatever that works out to be. Probably like 5-15% of the fare cost.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if some routes do in fact cost more to collect in fares. Obviously not the major busy routes.
As far as government spending goes, this wouldn't be a crazy waste of money. I know in Canada, Calgary has a fare free zone, where you basically don't pay fares within the downtown core. Plus you can reduce traffic, drinking and driving, better for the environment...
You say that it is far from free, but are you sure?
- Less pollution -> less sick people -> less medical costs
- Less cars on road -> less roads needed -> savings from road building and maintenance
- People will visit each other more (as it is free) and also on other places -> better mental health -> healthcare savings (at least in theory)
- More attractive to tourists -> more income
- Less cars -> People will save time when travelling due to less traffic -> time is money, so...
- A lot of waste-work around tickets is removed -> money is saved
I have no idea about what is the total amount of savings when everything is added together, but I would say that it is at least possible that they will actually save more, even if they have to pay for it in the taxes.
And means you don't have to buy a car yourself.
And reduces pollution.
And means people can get to your businesses without having to pay for fuel and parking.
And means that when your car breaks down you can still get to work without having to worry about it.
The point of things like mass transit is that you SPEND MONEY on them as a basic service that everyone is able to use, in order that you save lots of money elsewhere.
It's in a country's best interests to ensure that workers can get to work, reliably, on-time, and by an efficient means of transport. Because that means more productive (and therefore taxable) work and less congestion and pollution (and all major cities/countries can get fined for having bad pollution).
I have never understood why the London Underground isn't free. Or more reliable. I'd happily have it free in its current state, or more reliable and I have to pay what I do to use it. (P.S. it beats Luxembourg on most of those "amazing advances" already).
But public transport being "free" is no different to things like health services being "free"... for many basic services that keep your workforce happy, productive, and moving, they actually save more than you could spend on them.
This is why America's arguments against healthcare are always absolute bunk by the way. Failing to provide basic healthcare, no matter how much you tax private healthcare, will never make up for the 50+ years of lost productivity of a worker dying early, or the years of lost productivity of a worker who is ill, injured, scared to seek treatment, etc.
It doesn't work for everything, but healthcare and public transport it definitely works for. At worst you should heavily subsidise them.
Same way that my council collects my rubbish "for free" because if you charged me specifically to take my rubbish away, all those people who can't afford things will sacrifice rubbish collection and turn all the poor areas of the city into unofficial municipal rubbish tips in seconds.
And, of course, "for free" means "via your tax that you ahve to pay". Because everyone paying en-masse means that people who don't have much rubbish, or healthcare problems or use public transport much are subsidising those who do because they need to.
Socialism isn't about "things being free". It's about "why should people have to pay to go to work or receive basic healthcare" - when lack of those EXACT things are exactly the cause of why they can't afford to pay for them in the first place. It's about breaking the cycle, not offering freebies to millionaires. And some countries get that very wrong.
What shithole do you live in that this is the case? Where I live, everyone of all social classes takes the train.
And public transportation creating more traffic not less? Are you fucking high?
If you're an actually productive rather than parasitic economy, the picture looks very different and perks like these don't scale well.
If you're a productive economy then those workers are commuting to a place of work which then produces goods/services which contributes to GDP. You then tax those companies and their sales/trade. Those tax receipts should be sufficient to pay for the employee's transport costs, given that it's affordable out of their salary which is paid from a small part of their revenue. It should result in people using public transport more. Companies should benefit from more employees in their talent pool and the government benefits from reduced use of the road infrastructure which saves on costs.
They only fail to scale well over very large distances in countries with a sparse population, like America. Even then they would scale well in and around large cities.