This document proposes developing free public transport as a way to promote social justice and ecological sustainability. It discusses two alternative transportation systems - expanding private car infrastructure or improving public transit. The authors are interested in understanding projects that have implemented free public transit and their impact on society. They ask questions about who initiates such projects, their effects, costs, financing, and how they can empower social movements working for transformation. The authors believe free public transit brings together different groups to change society in a democratic, solidarity-based way and shows alternatives to current systems.

1. A research perspective concerning free public transport we propose to develop
- Free and equal in solidarity – providing public transport free of charge as a stepping stone
on the way towards another mode of production and living -
Crises are chances for changing and, as it were, switching the prevailing paths of development, and
for doing this with consequences reaching far into the future. One of the most central issues in the
present development of our societies is that of urban mobility and it will grow even more central
continuously, in a world where very soon, if not now already, the great majority of the global
population will live in mega-cities and in metropolitan centres. Two fundamentally alternative
developments are possible in this respect.
On the one hand, it could be attempted to modernize the presently dominant US American system of
mobility, with its focus on private cars, while reforming it ecologically and enlarging it to a global
dimension. In such a process, its underlying technical mechanism, motors being driven by petrol,
could be replaced by a technology relying on an electrical drive.
On the other hand, the present system of local public transport services could be improved
ecologically and become much more flexible.
The conditions for choosing between these two alternative roads are very different in different
places, because of very different paths of historical developments followed until now. While in many
US American metropolises local public transport has been significantly destroyed, European
metropolises are still characterized by mixed systems of transportation. In many Southern
metropolises a private-car-centred mobility of rising middle classes co-exists with an almost full
exclusion of the poor from urban mobility. Long-term experiments of free public transport could
open up to the development of globally attractive models of transport.
We are interested in describing and understanding existing projects of free public transport and in
initiatives for free public transports, and their dynamics within their societies. Our primary research
questions are the following:
1. Under which conditions do people accept and use free public transport (a) as a solution resp.
as a partial solution of specific problems of their individual daily life, (b) as an increase of life
quality, (c) as a contribution to solidarity within society, to something socially and
ecologically good/useful and under which conditions do they feel themselves encouraged to
be/to get involved in social activity changing their own life styles and beginning to change the
prevailing societal modes of living within their community, their region, their country, their
global region, or the entire world?
2. If and how the involvement for free public transport can promote changes in societal political
power balances in favour of social justice, social equality, and solidarity, on the way to
reducing violence, to starting and imposing a reconstruction of production and consumption
structures which makes them socially and ecologically more sustainable, as well as of the
socialization processes of individuals or social groups.
3. What can be learned from the analysis of existing specific projects of free public transport in
a perspective of organizing middle- and long-term projects and processes – what could be
done in order to motivate and to activate people; to develop abilities for individual and
collecti e learning; to generate "a long staying po er”; to deal ith specific political, social,
administrative, technical, technological, economic and financial issues needing a solution in
order to become capable of realizing local free public transport systems; to cooperate with

2. others; and (last not least) to develop the capability to cope with contradictions, with
successes and with defeats.
Finally, we are convinced that the argument for free and accessible public transport, as part of the
broader debates taking place around the notion of the commons, possesses three core points of
strength:
- It brings together very different social and political actors, in order to change society in a
democratic, socially just, and solidarity based way;
- It tackles a specific problem of the daily life of large groups or even of the majority of the
population, while intervening in the public debate on the development of societal life by
showing feasible alternatives, based upon social and ecological sustainability;
- It leads to the development of strategies to change the political power balance and it
contributes to a broader movement, or grouping of movements, orienting themselves
towards a real process of socio-ecological transformation.
Looking at the specific projects of free public transport, as they exist, are effectively being proposed
or being asked for, we enquire
(a) about the initiators;
(b) about possible effects and side-effects of free public transport (social, environmental, culture
and life style, city planning etc.);
(c) about the development of effective costs, perceived costs, savings and the financing of free
public transport (subsidies from overall taxes or a special tax/rate/contribution);
(d) about target groups (all public transport users or registered residents);
(e) about the problem of increased demand (pedestrians and cyclists becoming idle) and how it
may be avoided;
(f) about the (long term) process character of FPT projects;
(g) about the property resp. ownership relations concerning the infrastructure, the
transportation companies, and the service providers;
(h) about the agents involved in decision making, evaluation, control processes on local (and
regional) public transport
(i) about monitoring mobility of individuals/data protection
Have a look at https://www.facebook.com/groups/frei.fahren/ and visit the website of our
foundation www.rosalux.de; http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/freeing-public-transport/
Some contributions to the issue of free public transport
http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/standpunkte_0908.pdf
http://www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/wp-content/uploads/Brie_LUX_1_20091.pdf
http://hvvumsonst.blogsport.de/images/Dellheim.1011204.pdf
http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Analysen/Analyse_Just_Mobility.pdf
http://www.rosalux.de/publication/38364/den-krisen-entkommen.html
Who we are
Prof. Dr. Michael Brie, a philosopher and political scientist, fellow at the Institute for Critical Social Analysis of
the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin. His major fields of work are the theory and history of socialism and
of socialist transformation.
Dr. Judith Dellheim, a political economist, also fellow at the same institute. She works on issues of socio-
ecological transformation focusing on EU problems and emancipatory-solidarity oriented actors/agents.
Michael Brie: http://ifg.rosalux.de/ueber-mich/brie-biblio/ ; brie@rosalux.de
Judith Dellheim: https://rosalux.academia.edu/JudithDellheim ; dellheim@rosalux.de