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Free Rail Travel In Europe Is Becoming A Thing. The U.S. Should Try It Too.
Spain and Germany are experimenting with free rail travel. It’s working and worth emulating.
With inflation soaring and fuel prices riding high, countries in Europe are getting creative. Free or reduced rail travel — already in vogue in smaller European nations — is taking off among their larger counterparts. The early results are so promising they suggest the U.S. should adopt a similar plan and see where it leads.
This summer, Spain and Germany made short and mid-length rail travel effectively free in their countries, joining smaller counterparts including Austria, Luxembourg, and Estonia that have experimented with similar programs recently. Spain’s free rail travel program began this month and runs until the end of the year. Germany’s monthly 9 Euro rain ticket just expired, but was so popular it’ll likely be renewed in some form.
“This was one of the largest social experiments that ever have been conducted in Germany,” German member of parliament Jens Zimmerman told me. “It went extremely well.”
Free rail travel, if it works as intended, can cut down emissions, reduce traffic deaths, put money back into citizens’ wallets, and ease congestion on the roads. There are some…
