Being able to take the metro without having to pay a penny.
This is the dream of Audrey Pulvar, candidate for the presidency of the Ile-de-France region supported by the PS and the PRG, who has made free public transport her flagship promise… and already criticized.
An idea very popular in the big cities of the left where the mayors, new or in place, have been betting in recent months on the partial free access of their network.
We now drive for free on Saturdays in Rouen and all weekend in Nancy, before Nantes at the end of April and Clermont-Ferrand at the start of the school year, four cities run by the Socialists.
In Strasbourg, which has switched to environmentalists, the Eurometropolis has just voted free for those under 18 from September, following in Paris.
And the PS mayor of Lille Martine Aubry plans to introduce it in 2023 for students, people with reduced mobility and low-income seniors.
Montpellier, a metropolis on the front line
Montpellier wants to go even faster by becoming, at the end of 2023, the first metropolis to introduce total free access on its network, which has already been unpaid on weekends since September.
"It is a concrete measure, bringing about changes, which makes it possible both to reconcile ecology and social justice" defends its new mayor (PS) Michaël Delafosse.
Who explains to have come there after the crisis of the yellow vests and the marches of the young people for the climate.
“This offers a perceptible ecological transition horizon,” he emphasizes.
And we are not in the coercion by offering an alternative to the car ”.
For the chosen one, there is no doubt: "This will be the subject of the decade to come".
The idea is not new, however.
Since 1971, around forty French cities, often medium-sized, have adopted total free access.
“Historically, it has rather been adopted by right-wing towns, but in recent years, it has become a marker of the left,” recognizes Maxime Huré, expert at the Observatory of Free Transport Cities, who points to the experience of Dunkirk, the first major agglomeration to have adopted it in 2018.
"It worked brilliantly with a doubling of the number of buses", boasts its mayor (DVG) Patrice Vergriete, evoking "a psychological shock".
“We put public transport back in people's heads and we gave them purchasing power.
It is a fairer redistribution than lowering local taxes ”.
"An anti-ecological mirage" according to Valérie Pécresse
But the measure also has its detractors.
In Ile-de-France, the outgoing president (Libres!) Of the region Valérie Pécresse even sees it as “an anti-ecological mirage”.
Based on a study commissioned two and a half years ago, she considers it ineffective, stressing that total free access would only reduce car traffic in the region by 2% while increasing the number of car traffic by 6 to 10%. passengers in transport that is sometimes already saturated.
And especially expensive since, according to her, it would require raising 4 billion in taxes.
“There is no such thing as gratuity.
If it is not the travelers who pay, it is inevitably someone else ”she tackled recently in our columns.
On the left too, Audrey Pulvar's competitors, Julien Bayou and Clémentine Autain, are skeptical.
"Yes to social pricing, especially for the youngest, but the priority is to invest in the modernization and reliability of the network" estimates the number one of EELV.
However, Anne Hidalgo's assistant continues to defend her emblematic project that she intends to implement in stages, over six years.
To ensure its financing, which it estimates for its part between 2.2 and 3.5 billion euros, it wants to remove the obstacles to the creation of regional taxes and also relies on the disappearance of costs induced by car traffic ( accidentology, delivery delays, illnesses, etc.)
Politics Newsletter
Our analyzes and indiscretions on power
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
In fact, it is the question of the effectiveness of free transport on the major networks that is the subject of debate.
In September 2019, a Senate report on the subject concluded that it was "difficult to implement (...) or even undesirable in cities with saturated transport" where "the priority is obviously to increase supply" .
The mayor of Dunkirk himself admits: "It is a decision that must be taken by balancing costs and benefits and not for ideological reasons".
Less categorical, expert Maxime Huré believes that we still lack perspective on the issue.
"This is why the Montpellier experience will be closely scrutinized".