Should public transport be free?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some cities around the world have decided to make public transport free. Services can range from local bus routes to shopping malls to city-wide transit. We're in the rich nation of Luxembourg which became the first country to introduce free public transport nationally, as well as in Delhi where women can travel for free in an effort to boost the numbers of women in the workforce. We're also hearing from Kansas City where the funding model is running out for a scheme introduced four years ago. Produced and presented by Daniel Rosney

Image:A woman boards a bus in New Delhi in October 2019, following a Delhi goverment travel scheme distributing free bus tickets for women. (Photo by Sajjad HUSSAIN/AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Happy birthday to you.
0:04.0	Happy birthday!
0:07.0	Last year, Dasha turned 60.
0:10.0	Happy birthday to you.
0:14.0	And as well as the usual gifts from family and friends,
0:19.0	she also received something she'd never had before, a free travel
0:23.2	pass, because where she lives in London, England, those over 60 can travel for free on public
0:31.3	transport. My husband retired recently and we use the public transport quite often.
0:38.3	It has improved my life greatly.
0:40.5	We often go to London more often than we used to.
0:44.1	The station is up the road, the bus is just outside her house,
0:48.2	and we can just get on it, and we're in London in 40, 45 minutes.
0:52.6	We walk around, we have a dinner, lunch and then come back and it
0:55.9	cost us nothing. But if Dasha lived somewhere else in the world, she wouldn't necessarily
1:00.8	have had to wait until she was celebrating her 60th birthday to travel on public transport without
1:07.5	paying. More and more cities are introducing fair free travel for all,
1:12.9	and on this episode of Business Daily from the BBC World Service,
1:17.0	we'll be looking at the impact it has on commuting,
1:20.0	the positive and negative effects it has on some workers,
1:24.5	and examining if it makes a difference to our moods.
1:28.2	That's coming up with myself, Daniel Rosni.
1:33.4	We're going to start our journey in Landlocked Luxembourg, one of Europe's smallest countries nestled in between Germany, France and Belgium.
	...

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