Is free transportation good for nothing?

Making public transportation available without charge actually wouldn’t do good for the environment. By taking public transportation instead of driving a car alone, an individual can save up to 30% of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the American Public Transport Association. 

In efforts to promote climate-friendly policies, several US transit agencies have been experimenting with dropping their bus fares, to boost ridership and decrease emissions, but the effective end result actually wasn’t a net improvement, environmentally speaking, according to a Bloomberg report citing transport program data. 

Not charging fares did end up increasing public transport users, but these included commuters who would usually walk or bike towards their destination, or not travel in the first place due to the cost, all of whom were originally net zero emitters but became contributors to the emissions from public transport. 

The experiments also failed to sustainably lock in car owners, who continued to rely on their own cars as convenience and comfort trumped a zero-cost ride.