Monika Maciejewska, PhD

Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research at the Department of Geography of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Monika Maciejewska holds a PhD in Geography from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) where she was a member of the Research Group on Mobility, Transport and Territory (GEMOTT) since 2015. During her doctoral studies she carried out research stays in the Department of Geography and GIS at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) and at the University of York (Canada). Her dissertation dealt with the topic of gender differences in the use of transport modes in Barcelona and Warsaw. Monika is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research at the Department of Geography of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She is working on a project entitled “From low fares to no fares: An analysis of economic, operational, socio-spatial and political dynamics of fare-free public transport”. In her current research she focuses on analyzing the impact of public transport prices on social and especially gender equity in different urban contexts.

TITLE: The boom in fare-free public transport

ABSTRACT:

Free-free public transport (PT) is an emerging issue in public debate and in the media due to the recent implementation of this initiative in several European contexts as a response to the current social and economic emergency. In fact, the debate on fully subsidized PT has been present in academia for some years now, with experts from different disciplines analyzing the motivations and examining the impacts of this expanding policy.

Based on the findings of the project of I am part of (“From low fares to no fares: An analysis of economic, operational, socio-spatial and political dynamics of fare-free public transport”), I will explain the chronology of the implementation of the FFPT policy and its geographical distribution. In addition, I will briefly review the main expectations of this program and the praises and criticisms levelled at it.