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Video length: 3 min
TRUE OR FALSE. Do free municipal buses and trams reduce car journeys?
TRUE OR FALSE. Do free municipal buses and trams reduce car journeys? – (FRANCEINFO)
Does free transport really push motorists to abandon their cars? The response is mixed.
44 territories have set up a completely free transport system in France, since the 1970s in the town of Colomiers (Haute-Garonne) for example. Cities like Aubagne (Bouches-du-Rhône), Niort (Deux-Sèvres) or Dunkirk (North) have followed the same path, resulting in an increase in transport use. It has even doubled in Aubagne.
The car remains the majority
On the other hand, the economist Frédéric Héran, who carried out the study on Dunkirk, explains that before the transition to free travel, car travel represented 67% of trips, while 5% of trips were made by transport. With free transport, transport use increased to 9%, while car use fell slightly, to 65%, but remains in the majority. “Motorists are not the first to be attractedhe comments. When you make transport free, you first attract cyclists, it’s sad, but that’s how it is, then pedestrians, then motorists and more passengers than drivers“.
Other experiments in Europe such as Estonia or Sweden show the same results: an increase in transport use, but the car still occupies first place.
