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Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids (citylab.com)
In a plan to help families and reduce car usage, anyone under 11 years old will be able to ride metro and buses for free, as will people with disabilities under 20. From a report: Starting in September, Paris is making all public transit free for people under 11, including non-nationals. Preteens aren't the only ones getting a bonus, either. All people with disabilities will get free public transit until the age of 20, while high school students between the ages of 14 and 18 will be entitled to a 50 percent tariff reduction. To make transit access for this group even easier, any 14- to 18-year-olds who buy a travel pass will also get a free bikeshare account as well.
The plans, which apply across the Greater Paris region and cost an estimated $17 million a year, are part of a staggered plan to make things cheaper for people with mobility challenges. Already last spring, the region introduced a (means-tested) scheme by which adults with disabilities and all people over 65 got a free annual travel pass if they were on a low-to-medium income. This new plan to extend cheap or no fares toward younger people should make the public transit system more widely accessible and prove to be a happy cost-saver for families.
The plans, which apply across the Greater Paris region and cost an estimated $17 million a year, are part of a staggered plan to make things cheaper for people with mobility challenges. Already last spring, the region introduced a (means-tested) scheme by which adults with disabilities and all people over 65 got a free annual travel pass if they were on a low-to-medium income. This new plan to extend cheap or no fares toward younger people should make the public transit system more widely accessible and prove to be a happy cost-saver for families.
Glad to see other cities catching up, as enabling use of public transit is one of the best ways to reduce traffic, pollution, etc
https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/free-...
Under 5 - Free with a paying adult
5 to 10 - Free with a paying adult, or on their own by using a free Oyster card
11 to 15 - Free when using a free Oyster card
16 to 17 - Free when using a free Oyster card... but only if you LIVE in London.
Few years ago School kids pass work only between residential zone to school usually same zone.
Then School Pass start working unrestricted on weekend ( all zone from 1-7 ) ( for many it was huge because going to Paris from suburbs cost much, same to go to Disneyland which is was zone 5 )
Then all zone over 5 became zone 5
Then Zone all merged to only one ( prices increased for user of only zone 1-2 but decreased for everyone else )
Then this free pass for every kids, even without school pass.
If this is that cheap why don't they extend it to the whole population ?
7 * 17 = 120 millions / year.
10 millions a month. I guess this will be more than compensated by charging 1€/day for each car running through Paris.
If this reduces the traffic jams then I guess the car owners will 'happily' pay for it.
As nothing is never really free, as it wont change cost of transportation, it will just be one more burden on the part of the population that are taxpayers.
In France, a low wage employee is really likely to have less cash to live with than unemployeed.
Then you are surprised workers protest every saturday...
11 and under get to ride for free. 14 to 18 get a 50% discount.
So 12- and 13-year-olds get screwed, seemingly having to pay full fare.
If you are in school and a D.C. resident (21 and under) you get a free Metro pass. I'm glad to see European cities finally catching up.
As a kid growing up in NYC, I was issued a bus pass by the school. Glad France is catching up with 1970s America in taking care of its most valuable asset.
Same for Vienna. There pre-school children are always free and all school-children (up to 15, also later if you still go to school) get al free transportation card.
This isn't new and a really, really good thing. Good for Paris to catch up.
AC, go pop out a couple of sex trophies so you can take advantage if you think it's such a savings.
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Honestly, the main problem for people with disabilities in Paris (of the physical kind anyway) is that many of the metro stations have no elevators. Hence, while it may be cheap or free for them, they will have to move further than others to get into and out of the metros (i.e. they have to go to the right metro stations - I have no idea how tricky it must be for some one with a disability that visits Paris to find out which stations they can get in and out of)... It is also annoying when you have to go up those 2-3 floors of stairs with a big suitcase.
I think they really should fix that, but I guess this is at least them starting to think of such things.
They will make it taxpayer-funded.
There was a lot of people complaining about it but when things were all said and done it's a great program that's helpful for kids and their families.
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In theory, i am pro public transportation. This is probably a good measure.
But, a common transportation cannot be better than the people riding in it. And you would have to pay me well to make me use the public transport in Paris again. Or go to Paris tout court. I do not blame the RATP. It is just there are too many smelly, rude and uneducated people in them. When i was living in Brussels, i avoided public transport because of that. A girlfriend of mine bought a car because being groped there made her allergic to common transportation. Even if driving there is uncomfortable she wouldn't have any of it. Not with "those people".
It can be a turn off. If you want to make public transit appealing, you have to educate the public. People matter. You can build very good systems but if you do not have the right people in them it will not work.
I second those who said two wheels rock. I never biked in Paris but biking can be very efficient and a pleasant workout. But it is difficult without the right infrastructure and mindset. People are often deterred by the traffic and bike theft. Society as a whole would gain a lot by taking bicycles more seriously.
Well obviously they aren't free but all public services should be tax funded with the only exceptions being to close abuse loopholes such as caps on number of rides per day or replacements of documents.
Charging fees for these things is just a way of disproportionately taxing certain groups and income classes. Taxes aren't charged specifically to the group who uses a given service, that is on purpose, we all use different public services and the costs are pooled.
If you can't afford the program with tax dollars either raise taxes or cut somewhere else. It's called a budget.
Reducing CO2 output to zero is a fine goal, but if they want to increase public transportation ridership, then they should focus on those who are most capable of using it — single people. People with children gain much more from having their own vehicle than people without.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The French actually did better than that. They're not cowards, so they continued to build nuclear power plants through the present -- 75% of their electrical power is electrical, and most of their railroads (for freight as well) are electrified. They're far ahead of other countries in squashing CO2 production.
Toronto's transit system (www.ttc.ca) has allowed children twelve years and younger ride for free for a couple of years now. What this does is encourage families with children to take public transit rather than drive.There are already a number of good reasons for families traveling with children to prefer cars to public transit (e.g. no need to wait for vehicle arrival, easy transportation of items, etc.). Free child fares at least remove "cost savings" from being one of those reasons.
I understand the need/desire for separate school buses for special need students and young children, but I have long felt that in urban areas school buses for middle and high school should be eliminated and replaced with general purpose public transit buses, whose routes are boosted to accommodate school start/end times.
It should decrease costs of running both services in parallel, and increase usage of public transit during those peak hours helping to solve the chicken/egg problem of nobody wanting to use public transit if the routes are too infrequent or far away on one hand, and not wanting to fund improvements in public transit if people aren't using them. It would also make transit easier for zero-hour and after-school extra-circular activities, which frequently don't get any bus service, making it harder for low-income families to participate.
I also think it would be beneficial to give teens the extra freedom and responsibility that comes with using public transit vs a school bus. Yes, some will abuse it, but you can't expect young adults to take responsibility for themselves if you never give them responsibility.
Another is to see it as working toward removal of an externality that non-parents exploit by being childless.
Since we're using more natural capital than is being replenished year on year, it's the people making more people than their mere replacements who owe those of us choosing not to replicate. It scarcely matters that we could be more efficient, since we are not; we are way over Earth's carrying capacity as we are behaving, and as we tend to behave.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Someone is paying for it and itâ(TM)s probably the parents.
Finally there's a city that's taking action in getting those dangerous youth drivers off of the road with their difficulty to see over the steering wheel and hard time to reach the pedals.
Major US cities are doing this for kids as well in subways. Why? Because 95% of the fare beaters in places like Washington DC are black. It's part of 'criminal justice reform' which is code for: we have too many black people in prisons, so we need to change the laws that black people keep breaking. https://www.washingtonpost.com... Hilarious under any other circumstance, but this is no joke. Despite making subways now a conduit for more black crime (it follows that if you're bold enough to beat the fare, that's the tip of the iceberg) and increasing the load directly and indirectly on taxpayers, the politicians in those cities now can pat themselves on the back on a job well done to help the blacks.