Could free public transport work in Ireland? 

The idea of the Luas being free has long been a joke on social media - but could it ever become a reality? 

In New York City, newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a platform of making buses free to make life in the city more affordable. 

Would free public transport work in Ireland? 

On Moncrieff, Engineering Professor Brian Caulfield said free public transport pilots found the benefits are “mixed”. 

 “There are a few cities around the world that have done this and they’ve been a lot smaller than New York is,” he explained. 

“Tallin in Estonia and Luxembourg - countrywide, Belgrade, Kansas and there’s been some pilots in Boston. 

“There hasn’t been much of a modal shift away from the car which is, I suppose, the main intention of it. 

“What the majority of those studies show is that people give up walking and cycling and they get on the bus instead. 

“To go from a zero carbon, zero congestion mode [of transport] into a bus.” 

Traffic in Dublin. Picture by: Alamy.com.

Professor Caulfield added that Mr Mamdani’s policy indicated a positive attitude to public transport but was unlikely to persuade many drivers to give up their cars. 

“You kind of nearly need the jaws of life to get people out of their cars in cities,” he said. 

“In a city like New York, they’ll have such good public transport, anyone that’s still in their car in that city, they’re probably like to stay in it - even if public transport is free.

“You almost have to take the cars off them in order for them to switch over.”

Main image: A split of buses in Ireland and Zohran Mamdani. Picture by: Rolling News and Alamy.