Tallinn residents are entitled to a Green Card that enables them to travel on public transport for free
officials from Europe and China in a conference organised in August 2013: “We are frequently asked…why we are offering free-of-charge public transport. It is actually more appro- priate to ask why most cities in the world still don’t.” However, the economics of free
Since the free public transport referendum in March 2012 the population of Tallinn has increased by more than 25,000 residents and subsequently exceeded 440,000
million that the city budget has lost from not collecting ticket fares. “If all the registrants were tax-
payers,” says Deputy Mayor Taavi Aas, “then the project costs of free transportation would be covered.” In addition, Tallinn has also increased parking tariffs that keeps cars away from the city centre and provides additional income to the city budget.
DEMOGRAPHIC BENEFITS Researchers from the Centre for Transport Studies, Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have also found evidence of social benefits in the form of improved access to the city. Of all the districts in Tallinn, transit ridership jumped the most in Lasnamäe, a densely populated area with high unemployment and a large ethnic minority population of Russians.
46 The big question now is whether
Tallinn will be able to sustain free transit in the long run or go the way of Hasselt. The first three years have shown that the former was possi- ble. The city even bought new hybrid buses and has plans to replace all buses with modern ones within five years. Tramlines are also under ren- ovation and there are currently plans to purchase 20 brand new trams. Indeed, as Andres Harjo, Head of Tallinn’s Transport Department says, it is important to remember that price is not everything. Free rides will not be effective if public transport vehi- cles become overcrowded, slow, uncomfortable or unreliable. Quality is also an important factor to bring new passengers to public transport.
LESSONS FOR CITY FOLLOWERS Mayor Savisaar said in front of
thinkingcities.com
transit may be different in other cit- ies. One reason why it has worked in Tallinn is that the system was highly subsidized to begin with. That is not the case in London, for example, where fares account for 85 per cent of public transport revenues. Free fares there would leave a gaping budget hole. “It is easier to waiver the ticket revenue if there’s already a large subsidy,” Aas said on Tallinn TV. “The subsidised part used to be 70 per cent in Tallinn. Now it’s 94 per cent.” Different from Hasselt, Tallinn also has its own public transport operator, thus making the scheme less vulner- able from outside price hikes. As the Swedish researchers con-
cluded in their study, the most impor- tant lesson is financial stability and being able to do that sustainably in the long run. The city does not only have to replace the income lost to fare col- lection on an annual basis, but also to guarantee that the network can be extended and the level of service improved. In Estonia, a very large share of the local budget comes from municipal taxes. Therefore, the city of Tallinn did their calculations very well when they introduced the scheme.
FYI
Daniela Stoycheva is Project Manager at Polis
dstoycheva@polisnetwork.eu
For more information on Tallinn’s free public transit scheme contact Allan Alaküla, Head of Tallinn EU office
allan.alakyla@
tallinnlv.ee
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