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.

Comments

Good question

[Kokuyo]

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...

Re:Good question

[Anonymous Coward]

I've grown up here in Luxembourg. For there to be any kind of physical alteration between adults is extremely rare. As for kids, they might get a bit rowdy from time to time but not much more than that. A lot of that has to do with the place being so small that if you do start a scrap, somebody will know who you are and the cops will come knocking.

The difference between between 1st and 2nd class is a matter of compartment and seat colour. The rest, including the comfort of the seats, is exactly the same. The only reason why you'd buy a 1st class ticket is so you're guaranteed a seat and it's only applicable on trains as all bus transport is one class.

Re:Good question

[nospam007]

"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..."

Indeed. Disclaimer: I'm from Luxembourg and I worked as a railway dispatcher for 40 years.

1. Class (+25€ per month) is used by people who want to get seated in overcrowded commuter trains where half the people are standing. The rest is occupied by railway workers from middle management upwards, because they can use that one for free, just like the rest uses 2. class for free.
Also, train ticket controllers and sellers earn between 60.000 and 80.000€ a year, (not to mention QA, Finance and other top jobs who earn much more) so if those jobs are not needed anymore, just as all the expensive electronic ticketing, the vending machines and their IT, the 'free' part doesn't cost much in the end.

Also bus drivers won't be attacked for the money if there isn't any anymore.

Re:It's not Free... It is taxpayer funded...

[AmiMoJo]

Even if you don't use public transport it benefits you by reducing traffic.

Re: mKaart

[Luckyo]

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.

From a Lux. Native

[4im]

First off - the state already pays for something like 80% of the cost of public transport. Going 100% won't make much of a difference on the budget.

Traffic is indeed quite horrible, with all the commuting and street works. Luxembourg (which isn't only one city btw) is by far the most active economic center of the region, and so pulls in a lot of workers who live up to 2h (in normal conditions) driving away. It's also gotten a lot worse these past decades.

Public transport isn't very effective now on many lines, because it will suffer from works too (trains as well as buses), buses will be stuck in traffic just as much as cars. And "people incidents", let's not forget those. Lots of economic areas are badly covered, as the public transport lines are mostly aligned for Luxembourg City only - if you want to go somewhere else, good luck, count in a lot more time. To get people to switch from private cars to public transport would take a massively better quality, different lines... which isn't really on the to-do list as far as "we the people" can see.

Making things free won't automatically improve the quality of public transport, thus... things will probably remain as they are.

There's also the impression that something free isn't worth anything, some people will think they're entitled, will show poor respect to personnel etc., so we're really not that happy about this upcoming change, fearing that quality will actually go down.

Not much impact for me anyway - I live close enough to work for walking, which I do when weather won't permit the use of the motorbike (much easier to find parking space that using a car!).