> The alternative to a boost in ridership is a boost in car commutes.

Or walking... Do you walk a quarter mile or do you ride the bus? If the bus is free the number of able bodied people using the bus for trivial distances could increase.

You walk. Riding a bus means you have to wait for one first. A 5 minute walk isn't worth the wait unless there are extra conditions (no walkways, ice on the walkways, heat wave...).

No, but a fifteen or twenty minute walk or bike ride can lose out to a free bus. At least some walkers will be enticed onto the bus, which will require more capacity, which will then improve frequency, which will then attract some more walkers, rinse and repeat.

Above a certain frequency buses become extremely unreliable and dwell times start impacting travel time because bus stops only have so much room. With trains you have more room to work with, but once you run out the marginal cost of building new lines runs in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.

That's exactly what paying for services is designed to avoid.

When services are made free, people have to wait longer, paying with their time instead of with money.

People who don't want to wait and are not given the choice of paying for faster service end up having to buy cars instead, making traffic worse for everyone.

Alright, what if it's a mile or two? When I was a student I used to walk a few miles a day around town because I didn't want to pay for a transit pass. I was young, broke, healthy (and the walking helped me stay that way); I didn't particularly enjoy walking but liked walking more than I liked spending a dollar on a bus fair.

I don't think you can write off the decrease in foot traffic free public transit would cause.

Not sure how the fee works in Paris to this demographic, but elder people will usually rather use the bus probably.

The metro is full because people commute to their workplace. I don't think a significant fraction lives within walking distance of their job.

You might be inclined to move home to be within walking distance of your office, or to work from home sometimes, or to use the (very good) Velib bike hire scheme, or buy a bicycle or a motor scooter.

Metro rail is sexy, but it's only one part of the transport mix.

I move about almost exclusively by bike, but I realize that for many people it's not possible to live close enough to their workplace to do that comfortably. Also, Paris is a terrible city for cyclists (at least that's what it looks like in the videos I've seen) and it takes decades for infrastructure to be built up sufficiently for people to feel safe on a bike.

I think that making public transport free in an easy step on the way to a city that relies a lot less on cars. Of course making it more attractive to walk or cycle and more expensive to drive is very important too, but that requires a lot more work.

biking in Paris is worse than you think :

it’s dangerous because roads are very narrow ( so protected bike lanes are rare) and there’s a lot of traffic.

the bike city service got changed recently to include electric bikes and as a result nothing worked for months ( not sure it’s back to normal yet).

Even if you manage to get a bike there’s a very high chance your bike will have defects because people like to do stupid things with them, like getting down stairs, or hitting the curbs.

and finally, if you think about buying yourself a bike, expect to have it stolen on average once a year ( depending on its price).

"You might be inclined to move home to be within walking distance of your office"

Very few people would have this luxury in city like Paris, where housing is prohibitely expensive in the city center, where many offices are traditionally located.

And, before you say "You might be inclined to find a job where more affordable housing is available", many people do not have so much choice in terms of where to work (same as working from home).

I pine for the day when a viable arternative is just _working from home_. The technology has been available for at least a decade now. The resistance to remote work is social at this point, and it's stupid.

Only 30% of people have cars within Paris and public transport is cheap.

There is little point in making public transport free there. This is still money to be paid one way or another.

at this point, Paris needs to either massively transform itself ( higher buildings, larger roads, etc), which means destroying buildings in the center, like haussman did in the 19th century, or motivate people to just go live elsewhere.

Paris is losing people because the lodging costs are too high anyway

Anne Hidalgo is actively working on the second point.