T4.4 Fareless system *
Develop a fareless system for public transit.
Intercity Transit has decided to run a five year pilot program with free fares throughout the system. The plan presented to the Transit Authority in 2019 discussed the idea in detail. (Fares were only 10% of revenue in 2017, and were expected to be less than that in the future; the need to replace the aging current fare boxes would also have been a major capital expense).
A fair amount of research suggests that free fares may increase ridership some, but don’t have climate benefits. (Most, if not all of the new riders would have been made those trips by walking or on bikes if the buses weren’t free, not in cars.)
In 2012, the government’s Transportation Cooperative Research Program published a synthesis documenting the mixed past and current experiences of public transit agencies that have planned, implemented, and operated fare-free systems in the United States, Implementation and Outcomes of Fare-Free Transit Systems: A Synthesis of Transit Practice.
Recently, there have been a number of experiments with free fare systems in Europe, including in Dunkirk and in Luxembourg, which has made the whole country’s transit system fare free.
“Why Can’t Transit Be Free”, in the Jan 29, 2015 issue of The Atlantic, focuses on the small gains in ridership when free transit was tried in some larger cities.