Traveling without ticket?

The challenges are numerous. If you want to increase the usage of public transport – there isn’t a more effective of way of doing so than by providing free travel, not by a long way. If you are worried about uncivil behaviour, removing all the ticket inspections and the fraudulent use of public transport goes a long way to making people feel relaxed about being in each other’s presence. If you are worried about air quality, a significant number of car journeys can be avoided, and if household spending is a concern, it’s something that can be helped by the savings made on transport costs.

You are not sure that a market-based provision of transport is the end of the story. And a wholly convincing argument confirms your doubts about this. Is free travel preferable to ‘social’ pricing? I believe so. The progressive nature of taxation is there to establish a degree of social solidarity. But we need spaces where equality reigns – where the solicitor and the unemployed person are treated, recognised and respected equally; not according to what they have, but because of who they are: i.e. citizens, human beings.

Each of us has a public life and a private life, and they are based on different rules. Free travel provides both the freedom and equality of access that are typical of the public space. Roads are largely free. Street lighting, public parks and schools are all free. Yet they all come at a price, as everyone is aware.

We cannot have a society without ‘public places’. We cannot really claim a right to healthcare or to education without freeing the access to such benefits from the laws of the market. Whether I have money or whether I don’t, I’m still entitled to be cared for and to be educated. That’s what justifies the same notion of solidarity in funding terms, for example in the form of state funding.

The first lesson is a very simple one: it’s possible, and it works. The second one is that, contrary to today’s overpowering dogma, we can indeed allow ourselves the freedom to invent a form of distribution of benefits that is not market-based – but is instead according to people’s needs, and not the size of their bank account. The third lesson is that we know how to use this. Greed and personal interest are not the only effective ways of motivating people.

Is it possible everywhere? There can be technical questions to be resolved, at least in the short term. Would it be right to significantly increase the use of the Paris region’s RER train network, when those trains are already packed? My suggestion is that transport should be free, right now, for everyone aged under 25. Let our children travel around, worry-free. They will, after all, be paying for our retirement. Let’s pay for their right to live in their own towns and cities. I also think that tension will ease as a result. Racism, which is so often a feature of ticket inspection, would be reduced. And every one of us would feel better!