THE COST INVOLVED with making public transport free would be “much better focused” on increasing the frequency and the quality of current services, according to the National Transport Authority (NTA).

It comes following a report commissioned by the NTA claiming that removing fares for public transport would not achieve a “substantial reduction” in car use – with researchers finding that just 1% of people would switch from the car. 

The transport report titled ‘Fare-Free Travel Policy Analysis’ – which was conducted by Ernst and Young (EY) – found that the net financial cost of removing fares would be in the region of €350-€550m per annum. Additional capital expenditure of €140m would also be required to prevent overcrowding on buses in light of increased demand. 

It found that motorists are more likely to switch to public transport if fuel prices increase or if restrictions are introduced for parking and road usage.

Tim Gaston, the NTA’s director of public transport services, said the vast majority of people who would start using the bus would be people doing “more short distance trips” in place of walking or cycling. 

“Every 1% that we can bring about is obviously worth doing. But the scale of the spend involved the hundreds of millions that would be have to be spent to make public transport free, we believe would be much much better focused into new services, increasing the frequency and the quality of the service that we’re already providing,” Gaston told RTÉ Radio One’s Today with Claire Byrne.

“And we’ve proven that to be the case many, many times. So recently we’ve invested significantly on the back of additional government funding in new services right across Ireland, rail as well as in our cities. Every time we do we see a very significant increase passenger numbers. That’s where we believe that funding should be focused.”

“This extra capacity could take years to implement, and considerable overcrowding would be unavoidable in the initial years of the policy,” the report said. 

However, the research did find a number of benefits to removing fares.

It noted that bus users “tend to belong to lowerincome groups”, so removing fares would reduce transport poverty.

Despite this, it claimed that overall these benefits would “likely be more than offset by the costs and disbenefits” of people switching from cycling and walking to using the bus.

He said travel is currently free for people aged 66 and over while reduced fares are in place for people aged 19 to 23 and for children. A 20% reduction in fares is also in place across all travel as of last year, Gaston added.

This type of fare structure allows the NTA to “target those parts of society where you think it would be beneficial to do so”, he told the programme.

“But the universal reduction of fires we believe to zero would not achieve the objective for us focusing the €500 million plus spend that would take into increasing the frequency, increasing the quality of what’s out there, we think would would return in spades and that’s what we’re seeing.” 

The EY report also found that the commercial bus sector could be negatively impacted if competing with a free service.

“Additional public investment may be required to sustain commercial services,” it said.