Social Costs and Benefits of ‘Free’ Public Transport in Dutch Cities

Relevance Over the last years, ‘free’ public transport – especially for target groups – has become a hot item. Lots of cities and countries introduced and invested in ‘free’ public transport for elderly people. Also other target groups have been introduced. With ‘free’ public transport cities try to improve social wellbeing of its inhabitants, or are trying to solve some traffic problems, like congestion, environmental problems, parking problems etc. The question is whether the costs are lower than the benefits of these policies. Academic research only looked to some effects of ‘free’ public transport on the travel behaviour of people, but a look to the real costs of ‘free’ public transport - and followed from this a cost benefit analysis - has not been taken place yet. To fill this gap in scientific research, a social cost - benefit analysis of ‘free’ public transport is an interesting research topic. The investigation focus on ‘free’ public transport for specific target groups and focus on the situation of Rotterdam, where the city pays €4.5 million to the local public transport company RET for ‘free’ public transport for elderly people. The question is whether these investments are profitable for the society or not and if ever lager projects as completely ‘free’ public transport would be beneficial for society. Because of this, a theoretic situation in which public transport is completely ‘free’ on all RET lines in the Rotterdam region, is also part of this thesis.