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Title: Free public transport comes to Montpellier (count the 'l's...) Post by: stuving on December 21, 2023, 13:26:39 The introduction of free travel travel on the city's public transport network was announced some time ago, but today is the first day of full operation. From Euronews (https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/04/16/this-european-city-is-making-public-transport-free-for-citizens-from-december) (last month):
Quote Montpellier is getting ready to launch its free public transport scheme ahead of Christmas. Montpellier in southern France is getting ready to introduce free public transport on 21 December. It will become the largest French metropolis to boast such a scheme. From next month, local residents will be able to utilise a free transport pass across the city’s bus and tram network. The scheme aims to slash emissions, reduce pollution and improve accessibility for the city’s residents. “By introducing free transport, we are bold in taking a great measure of social justice, of progress, which works for the ecological transition,” tweeted the mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse when the scheme was announced earlier this year. Montpellier has been experimenting with free transport on weekends since September 2020. In 2021, it extended this to weekdays for under-18s and over-65s. The further extension of the scheme is part of the city’s €150 million push for zero carbon mobility, which also includes investment in cycle lanes and the creation of a low emissions zone. Where else has free transport in France? Montpellier is far from being a trailblazer. In fact, French towns and cities have been rolling out such schemes since the country’s transport management was decentralised in 2015. However the majority of these have less than 150,000 inhabitants. With almost 200,000 inhabitants, Dunkirk is the largest city to have embraced free transport so far. After it introduced fare-free bus routes in 2018, passenger numbers increased by an average of 85 per cent. In this case it does not extend to trains, which the city does not run - and in any case the TER service is limited. Just one line along the coast, serving some villages, though trains are quite frequent. To benefit, residents have to go to the appropriate office and get a pass of the kind previously restricted to just the deserving (by age, mostly). Visitors still need a ticket, so presumably the existing purchase methods will continue - at least for now. The step up from Dunkerque is not that big really - less than double the population - but Montpellier ranks as a city not a town. Montpellier does have some previous for radical action to remove cars from the city centre, going back to the time of the long-serving and somewhat dictatorial mayor Georges Frêche. This page is printed from the "Coffee Shop" forum at http://gwr.passenger.chat which is provided by a customer of Great Western Railway. Views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit www.gwr.com for the official Great Western Railway website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that content provided contravenes our posting rules ( see http://railcustomer.info/1761 ). The forum is hosted by Well House Consultants - http://www.wellho.net |