Who benefits most from fare-free public transport? Evidence of social and neighborhood effects from the case of Clermont-Ferrand, France

Marion Drut (), Stéphanie Truchet-Aznar () and Lucas Fages
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Marion Drut: CESAER - Centre d'économie et de sociologie rurales appliquées à l'agriculture et aux espaces ruraux - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Dijon - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement
Stéphanie Truchet-Aznar: Territoires - Territoires - AgroParisTech - VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne
Lucas Fages: Territoires - Territoires - AgroParisTech - VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne

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Abstract: This paper estimates the impact on household mobility of the fare-free public transport measure implemented on weekends in Clermont-Ferrand, France. More precisely, we are interested in the influence of socioeconomic determinants on the likelihood of using public transport more often following the introduction of a free travel measure. We investigate changes in travel behavior at the individual level, using data from the household travel survey (Cerema Certified Mobility Survey -EMC²) conducted in the metropolitan area of Clermont-Ferrand in 2023. We built a weighted binary logistic regression to estimate the probability that users increase their public transport use due to the fare-free policy, depending on their socioeconomic characteristics. The results show that free public transport increased usage for more than half of users, with effects varying across individual characteristics. In Clermont-Ferrand, low-income households, residents of priority urban districts, and families with children benefit more from the fare-free policy. We demonstrate that residing in a priority urban district (QPV) has a specific impact. All else being equal, residents living in a QPV have an estimated 85% probability of increasing their use of public transport following the introduction of farefree travel, corresponding to a 31-percentage-point (pp) higher probability than residents living outside a QPV. Therefore, the estimated impacts are not merely compositional but reflect genuine contextual externalities operating at the local level: There exists a neighborhood effect. This study intends to contribute to the literature on free public transport policy evaluation, with a focus on the socioeconomic heterogeneity of effects.

Keywords: fare-free public transport; household travel behavior; household mobility; neighborhood effect; socioeconomic heterogeneity; travel survey; transport policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07-16
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