The small European country of Luxembourg has made all of its public transportation – trains, buses and trams – free for its residents starting on 1 March 2020.
The aim is to reduce the country’s carbon footprint, since according to Eurostat Luxembourg has the highest number of cars in the union, by persuading workers and commuters to choose public transportation to get around.
Luxembourg, landlocked between Germany, France and Belgium and whose capital Luxembourg City is one of the four official capitals of the European Union, is the first country to implement a scheme like this - it’s been done before but only in cities, like Tallinn in Estonia or Dunkirk in France.
While several groups of the more than 600,000 citizens of Luxembourg already travel for free (like students under 30 or people under 20), this new project will benefit everyone and hopefully shift the country’s habits from cars to public transportation. One obstacle to the success of this plan might be the idea many residents of Luxembourg have about their public transport, which is seen as not up-to-date and sometimes inconvenient – but there’s also a plan in place to modernize the whole transport system which should turn that idea around.
This article was originally published on 29 November, 2019 and updated on 2 March, 2020.
