Free-fare public transport: economic, environmental, and social sustainability

The public transport is one of the viable solutions to counteract the problems generated by road traffic congestion. Making it free can be a strong incentive to favour mobility by public transport over private cars. The free-fare public transport (FFPT) is already a well-established urban policy in a hundred locations around the world. Nevertheless, this topic is not considered in many countries, or it has only recently started to be talked about. This paper aims to fill this gap by attempting a comprehensive analysis covering the various implications of such a choice. Starting from an historical-geographical inventory of FFPT programmes, the opportunity to implement the FFPT is evaluated from three different perspectives: i) economic, i.e. the impact that it can have on the budgets of transport companies and municipalities; ii) environmental, i.e. the contribution that it can make to the development of sustainable mobility; iii) socio-cultural, i.e. the ability of it to facilitate the modal shift from the use of private cars to public transport for citizens’ travel. The advantages and disadvantages of FFPT is discussed in relation with the significant indirect effects on the various mechanisms that regulate modern societies, using the situation in Italy as a paradigm.