French city Montpellier embraces free public transport, but will it cut traffic?

“I’ve been taking the tram more since it’s been free,” Cécile, who lives on the outskirts of Montpellier, tells RFI.

“It’s really nice to be able to take the tram and not have all the stress of a car.” 

The city’s four tramways and roughly 40 bus lines have been free to the 500,000 people who live in Montpellier and its suburbs since last December.

First trialled on weekends, free rides were made permanent for under-18s and over-65s from September 2021 before being rolled out to all residents.

That decision made Montpellier the biggest metropolitan area in France to date – and one of the biggest in Europe – to experiment with free public transport.

Nearly 140,000 vehicles pass through Montpellier each day, the city estimates, generating traffic, noise and air pollution.

Making trams and buses free will “encourage car users to make the shift to public transport, either partly or entirely”, the council predicts. 

Julie Frêche, the councillor in charge of transport, says passenger numbers are already up. 

“We’re waiting for the end of the first quarter to set out initial results, but what I can say is that we’ve topped pre-Covid user rates,” she told RFI. 

Environmental benefits unclear 

But transport experts say the numbers need a closer look.

Frédéric Héran, an economist at Lille University who has studied data on travel habits in cities across Europe before and after they made public transport free, told RFI it wasn’t clear the policy ultimately reduces emissions.

“When people say that car users are taking public transport instead, it’s a small number, and it’s never specified whether that’s drivers or passengers. Most likely it’s car passengers who are switching to using free public transport,” he said.

Free transport also draws in pedestrians and cyclists, according to Héran, travellers who don’t have a carbon footprint in the first place.

After Estonia’s capital Tallinn became one of the first big cities to waive fares in 2013, a study a year later found that the number of trips made on foot fell by 40 percent, while trips by car dropped just 5 percent – and tended to cover longer distances.

By 2021 the country’s national audit office concluded that free public transport, despite increasing passenger numbers, ultimately had not reduced driving, with more than half of all journeys to work still made by car.

Based on Héran’s observations, he said, free public transport is “neutral for the environment, but you certainly can’t say it’s good for the environment”.

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Patchy service 

To convince more drivers to leave cars at home, commuters say public transport has to provide better service.

A collective of Montpellier public transport users says the network was already stretched before fares were scrapped, complaining of crowding, long waits and patchy connections across the growing suburbs.

Now they fear the situation will get even worse as passengers increase and ticket revenues plummet.

The free transport scheme is expected to cost Montpellier some €30 million per year, which the council says will be covered by corporate taxes.

Companies with 11 employees or more – around 2,500 of which are based in the greater urban area – have to pay a 2 percent payroll tax that’s earmarked for the local transport system.

The council says it plans to add an extra tram line and five more bus routes over the coming years, as well as building more than 200 kilometres of new cycle lanes.