Starting next September, in the Canary Islands, bus transport passes will be subsidized by 50 percent by the State, as part of the economic measures of the energy crisis. A priori, it may seem like a good measure to encourage the use of public transport to the detriment of the private vehicle, taking into account reasons such as fuel savings due to its upward trend at the moment, allowing less pollution and enabling the reduction of congestion caused by traffic.
This measure is not new, it is the political instrument that has often been used as an "indisputable" formula, even with approaches to gratuity. This instrument, which has undoubtedly favored access to transport for the most disadvantaged sectors of the population or those who do not have private mobility, even for the promotion of new lines at certain times, may not yield good results for the current situation.
The partial or total subsidy of public passenger transport does not really favor the disadvantaged classes too much, nor does it help to reduce pollution or congestion. In this strategic issue for the economy of any place, measures such as gratuity are being taken, where we find the case of Tallinn (Estonia 2014) where it goes from partial to total subsidy. This facilitated growth of 3 percent in the first weeks and 14 percent in the first year, but in subsequent years it has not exceeded an average of 3 percent. Although a growth in passengers can be observed, it does not represent achieving sustainability objectives at all.
A study carried out by the Institute of Economics of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (2019), in Santiago de Chile, provided free passes to a group, from the study of their behavior, these showed that their use was only for leisure trips and that in no case was it to reduce the use of the private vehicle, but to avoid walking trips. On the other hand, the users who used the pass the most were those who lived closest to the stations or stops, to the detriment of those who were further away. The same results are shown by other studies such as the one from the University of Groethe in Frankfort (2021) on free passes for public employees.
Research carried out between 1996 and 2017 showed that a 10 percent reduction in public transport only reduces the use of private vehicles by between 0.17 and 1.3 percent.
Therefore, what influences the fact that partial or total subsidy processes do not have the success that is expected? Well, even if transport is subsidized, it shows that money is not the important thing, at least in this case. The time factor is therefore seen as the element that we consider most when we move. This element includes not only the travel time, but also the travel times to the stations or stops, the waiting time and the transfers. In the study "The demand for public transport: the effects of fares, service quality, income and car ownership" (2006) from the University of Leeds, shows that these waiting times are between 40 and 100 percent more expensive than the time spent traveling in a private vehicle.
Lowering public transport prices does not represent a path towards a more sustainable society in the long term, when what matters to us is time. Aid or subsidies to public transport represent a very important support for certain sectors of the population and at certain specific times, types of discounts to promote the use of the bus, but in no way in a generalized way, since its low efficiency is shown and it would only maintain the loyalty of those who have no other means to move, when the intention is that those who have other routes opt for public transport.
Therefore, if the aim is to promote the use of buses, compared to private vehicles, it must go through quality, that is, improve services, reduce waiting times, increase frequencies, pay attention to areas far from the centers and improve interconnectivity. It must be guaranteed that waiting or travel times are adequate to the mobility needs of travelers and that they do not feel uncertainty, stress, unease, due to the lack of service, due to schedule breaches, due to the lack of places, due to the distance of the stops, etc. as happens now in some islands of the archipelago, which make those who own a private vehicle not going to abandon it.
The proposed measures represent an expenditure of money that does not contribute to a social benefit. Long-term planning, taking into account all the elements that make up mobility and including urban planning, will certainly respond with positive results in favor of the use of public transport to the detriment of the private vehicle, without affecting other types or modes of environmentally sustainable movement. There must be a social and political commitment in this matter, since it is a strategic element of our lives such as work, housing or education.
*Luis Morales, Master in Mobility and Transport (UPO)
