“Mobility is one of the greatest gifts you can give to people,” says Nicky Gardner, as the rain streaks down the windows of a busy northbound train from Luxembourg City. Francois Bausch, the visionary transport minister who brought in the free mobility scheme, has two key advantages. While many locals are comfortably unfamiliar with buses and trains, their taxes can, he hopes, help deal with overloads on the roads. The policy is designed to encourage a modal shift from road to rail and bus — in other words, to lure motorists out of their cars. Yet it could trigger unintended consequences such as flooding Luxembourg’s border villages with haphazardly parked cars as crafty neighbours from Belgium, France and Germany exploit the free onward transport. In the time it takes a Pret barista to make a cafe latte on the ground floor of the DfT HQ, a civil servant could work through just some of the negatives. The already overloaded 7.57am from Woking to London Waterloo would become unbearable without the high fares that suppress even denser crowds. The property market in random towns such as Taunton, Oxenholme and Skipton would be distorted as prospective housebuyers cashed in on vanishing season tickets to Bristol, Manchester and Leeds respectively. And, if price is not a factor, how exactly will the Friday night berths on the Caledonian Sleeper from London to the Scottish capital during the Edinburgh Festival be allocated? Buses and Tubes are free in the vicinity of Heathrow airport, in a bid to cut car use; in Glasgow and Manchester, rail travellers connecting between the two main stations can take free buses; and no one lucky enough to reach 60 in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales or London (but 65 in the rest of England) need ever paya local bus fare again. Brighton and Bristol are the obvious candidates: relatively wealthy cities with terrible traffic and strong green credentials.
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