Free Public Transport? More Than Just An Idea In Luxembourg

For many congested cities around the world, it makes a lot of sense to take public transport instead of driving a personal car. The convenience, as well as not having to find a space to park a car at all times of day, makes it a lot easier to get around - and of course, there is the much welcome benefit of reducing congestion on the whole by taking cars off of the road.

But the one element that people fail to consider when trying to apply such a system here is that the infrastructure itself becomes a highly costly investment - and that investment has to be passed on to the men and women who take public transport every day. To maintain a truly world-class system that you may find in Japan or the UK, you have to charge passengers incredible amounts of money.

And yet, Luxembourg thinks they have managed to solve this issue - and they intend on making public transport free during the summer of 2019. Xavier Bettel, prime minister of this small country, made the announcement after being sworn in for a second term according to reports by The Guardian. Bear in mind that the population of Luxembourg is just over a tenth of the island-state of Singapore.

But despite the low population numbers, quite nearly everybody in Luxembourg drives - the highest car to person ratio in the whole of Europe. This problem is further compounded when free travel between European nations allows around 200,000 extra people into the country every day for work, which worsens the congestion by over 30% based on the initial population numbers. By making public transport free, Bettel hopes people will be encouraged to use the public transport services more often and reduce the number of cars on the road.

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