Report on the 2013 'Summer School' international conference for Free Public Transport in the 'Capital of Free Public Transport - Tallinn, Estonia, by Fpt.com
Tallinn, the winner of the Free Public Transport Award 2012,
implemented a zero-fare policy at the beginning of this year. At the
same time, the city has profiled itself as a strong advocate for free
public transport. Through conferences, studies and networking they have
positioned themselfs as the main city of the free public
transport-movement. This week their zero fare-themed “Summer School”
took place at the University of Tallinn. Among the guests where
lecturers from the free public transport-cities Hasselt in Belgium,
Chengdu in China, Aubagne in France as well as Zory and Zabki in Poland.
The EU commissioner of transport, the Mayor of Tallinn and researchers
from Tallinn University as well as the Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm were also present.
Tallinn
Tallinn where represented by mayor Edgar Savisaar who told the audience
that since they removed the fares in the public transport they have seen
a 14 percent decrease in car traffic as well as a 15 percent increase
in public transport users. One of the reasons that Tallinn implemented a
fare-free system was that they already subsidised the public transport
by 70 percent and felt that it was hard to motivate why such a hefty
amount of public funding should be spent on an operation that was to
expensive for some to use. Instead they reasoned that if the public
transport is something that is worthy of such a large public funding,
should not everybody also have the right to use it?
Before Tallinn removed the fares, the share of public transport
commuters had slowly but steadily shrunken. And even though they had
spent a lot of money on new buses and trams that trend did not change,
but this year 21 percent more of the Tallinners have used the public
transport, out of which eight percent had never used it before. 68
percent of the citizens use public transport as their main way of
getting around, a number that has grown by 13 percent while the share of
people who mainly drive cars to get around have shrinked with nine
percent.
One thing that strikes you on the streets of Tallinn is that the
buses are travelling at a significant speed while the cars are stuck in
traffic. This is due to the reserved bus lanes that were implemented
just before the fare was abolished. One criticism we have directed
toward Tallinn is that they haven’t made public transport free for all,
just for citizens of the city. It was motivated by an effort to get
prople to register as citizens of Tallinn, thus getting more municipal
tax revenue. This has been succesful, Tallinn has gained 11.000
inhabitants and 11 million euro in revenue. The idea to attract people
to register as citizens was reoccuring among the lecturers, and stresses
the importance of keeping together and integrating the public transport
system not only in cities, bur in entire regions. To mutually finance
public transport in the region simplifies making it free for all.
Mayor Savisaar also mentioned the critique that people will stop
walking or using bicycles after the zero-fare policy is implemented. He
said that this had happened to some extent in Tallinn, but the fact that
so many people have stopped using cars have a much larger on public
health, and car drivers are the ones with immobility.
Chengdu
Chengdu is a central city in the Sichuan-province of China. The city has
5 million inhabitants and is the transport hub of a region consisting
of 15 million people. Since 2012 a number of fare-free bus lines have
opened, to this date the number is 44 lines. They have also implemented
free public transportation between 5-7 AM and many local buses has also
abolished fares. This lecture was a little bit hard to understand, very
technical, with diagrams and maybe it required knowledge of the city
itself. But Shi Tao, vice chairman of the Chengdu Bus Group, concluded
that the zero-fare experiment was successful and would be implemented on
yet more buslines. Also he confirmed that everything they did
“benefited the people very much”, the dictator-lol-factor was quite high
during this lecture.
Hasselt
Hasselt is a city in Belgium that has been one of the most interesting
zero-fare cities. During the nineties they were to bulid a third bypass
highway, but the costs were running wild and proposed explotation of
precious nature forced the plans to a halt. Instead they abolished fares
and reduced the space for cars on the second bypass. It resulted in a
1300% increase in public transport ridership!
Marc Verachtert, civil servant of Hasselt’s public transportation,
also mentioned the critique towards zero-fare policys. He agreed that
some bicyclists (10%) started using buses and trams instead, but the
total amount of bicyclist did increase when fewer cars occupied the
streets. Hasselt also decreased the parking lots in the city, from 1500
to 500, and the city has an interesting system called last-mile delivery
to decrease the heavy transports. Around the city they have depots
where lorrys deliver goods, which is then packed on transport bicycles,
for example.
The bad news is that Hasselt, despite the success story, will take a
step backwards next year and experiment with fares again. The Social
Democrats and The Green were elected 2012 on a program to keep the
zero-fare policy, but still it will be brought down. Much of the
conflict seems to relate to the relationship with the region, which
finances 75% of the program. Verachtert argued that a major obstacle in
negotiating with the region was that they lacked adequate statistics on
the impact of zero-fare. Many inhabitants of Hasselt are pleased and see
the advantages, and ridership was up 1300%, but this was not enough for
the region.
Verachhert requested more research on the subject, and said that
Hasselt will remain in the network of zero-fare cities, initiated by
Tallinn. They will gather information, and hope to bring free public
transportation back to their city soon.
Żory
Żory is a small town in southern Poland, but a town wih big ambitions:
they want to become the leading free public transport-city in the
country. Starting next year they will implement zero-fare as one of
several measures to stop the population decrease. They have not decided
on wheather to make it free for everyone or just for people registered
in the town. When they asked the participants, the representative from
Aubagne said that everyone should benefit, because no one likes to be
controlled.
Ząbki
Ząbki is a town near Warszawa with 50.000 inhabitants, although only
29.000 persons are registered. Many commute to Warszawa for work or
studies, and the zero-fare policy was a measure to get more people to
register as inhabitans, because public transportation is only free for
the ones that have registred.
Conclusion
The conference showed that there are two different camps in the
zero-fare question: those that made public transportation free for all,
and those who made it free for registered inhabitants. This is a
question of how it is financed, Aubagne and Hasselt hade regional
backing and could make it free for all. The other cities finance public
transportation by themselves. This shows the value of integrated public
transportation systems.
