[oikos]

Everyone gets a seat because the whole population is around million and the capital 400K. It's less complex to manage than, say, London. Less dense.

The whole idea was a mayor's election campaign. Rest of the parties were all against it.

Referendum: ask any population if they'd prefer free transport. There: 75.5%.

The money comes from somewhere. Although Estonia had average less national debt, their infrastructure (health service, education etc) is post2008 screwed like everywhere else.

[jfoster]

The money certainly comes from somewhere, but is it more efficient this way? No ticket sales overhead, no enforcement overhead, etc. Seems smarter given that public transport is something that you would want the population to use instead of their own vehicles.

[maccard]

> No ticket sales overhead, no enforcement overhead, etc.

There are still ticket sales in this (and most like this) programs. Usually they only apply to nationals/residents of the city/town, and others have to buy tickets.

[jfoster]

It seems like a missed opportunity if they're doing it that way. They get a bit of revenue, but they could otherwise have been more tourism friendly and done away with unnecessary ticketing infrastructure.

[collyw]

I imagine you need a lot less staff.

[dominicr]

The size of population and complexity of the system is only one small factor. You still have to organise about the same level of transport system regardelss of where the money comes from. Ridership doesn't increase massively with these schemes, what tends to happen is that the people who use the service just use it more.

In Tallin apparently some of the funding needed came from an increase in municipal taxes. You have to be registered as living in or around Tallin to get the free transport, and a lot of people updated their registration to addresses in Tallin. As a result tax income moved to Tallin (but at a loss to other places).

So a large factor in the cost effectiveness of a free transport policy is the amount that the transport system is subsudied and the ratio of that amount to the budget. In places where the transpost system is mostly funded by taxes (most places in the world, especially Europe & the US) it's easier to introduce as there's less of an impact on the budget.

The benefits & beneficiaries of this policy aren't clear and easy to define as they vary place to place. There's a lot of thinking that it's better to provide free or cheap transport for those who earn less and have to make long public transport journies to work as they're priced out of living in cities.

[NotPaidToPost]

"Everyone gets a seat" when the system is correctly dimensioned not when the overall population is small.

[princeb]

i wonder if this would work if small towns in usa could implement it, like those with around 500-1000 people living in them?