For one French city, free buses have changed everything

World Half Full
Jan 15
4 min read

COMMUNITY/ENVIRONMENT

In the northern French city of Dunkirk, public transport is free. And has been so for the past decade. “It’s not bad, really not bad,” says Theo, a 23-year-old gardener and a daily user of the service, in typical French understatement. “You never have to wait long. There’s less car traffic and less pollution because of it. And it’s free.”

About 150 vehicles — labeled “100% free bus, 7 days a week” — crisscross the city and its surroundings, giving 200,000 residents free access to 18 routes.

“We made this decision to prioritise freedom [for residents] and really create a shock to improve mobility in Dunkirk,” says Jean-François Montagne, the deputy mayor of Dunkirk and head of the region’s ecological transition efforts. He argues making public transport free reduces air pollution and traffic, and supports low-income households.

In Dunkirk, it took four years — from 2014 to 2018 — for efforts to hit the road. First, authorities publicised the program in the media and on the streets, carried out surveys with residents, simplified and reworked timetables, improved the quality of vehicles, repositioned bus stops and increased the size of the fleet. In 2015, they launched free travel on weekends as a test, before rolling out the service seven days a week in September 2018.

“You can’t just make buses free from one day to the next,” says Montagne. “If the service is underused, timetables not well understood, if buses are always late, and you don’t change people’s views of public transit, then it won’t work.”

Central to Dunkirk’s strategy was reinventing the image of public buses, which were typically seen as overloaded, unclean and not particularly safe. Authorities now clean buses every day, and if a seat is broken then it’s replaced within a day. Each route, they decided, should have a scheduled arrival every 10 minutes. Smartphone apps also allow passengers to track where and how full their bus is.

“These might seem like small details, but we worked a lot on this,” says Montagne.

And it seems to be paying off. According to Dunkirk city hall, the number of bus passengers has increased by 165% since the initiative was introduced.

“In Dunkirk, it’s led to a huge rise in users, it’s revitalised the city and it works as a kind of social redistribution,” says Maxime Huré, a lecturer in political sciences at France’s University of Perpignan Via Domitia who has studied the program.

A 2019 study by the Observatory of Free Transport Cities, an independent body, found that the policy has led to residents making more trips to the city centre, that about half of the new bus riders were taking bus journeys they previously made by car, and that the attractiveness and image of the city has improved.

Separate research in 2021 found that free buses are helping young people in Dunkirk shift away from private car ownership. Indeed, according to Montagne, city hall figures show that 10% of Dunkirk bus users have abandoned their cars since 2018, cutting the use of city carparks by 30%.

Monique, a 75-year-old retiree, who stopped driving two years ago due to her declining eyesight, champions the ease of free bus transport as an alternative. She’s pleased there’s even a standalone night service akin to a city-run Uber service that can be ordered on demand at 10pm, taking her directly home for just €2 when she goes to the theatre. “I think it’s really super, it’s very well serviced,” she adds.

In France, more than 45 local authorities have made some form of public transport free for all passengers, including Aubagne, Compiègne and Montpellier. In the latter, where the policy applies only to permanent residents, bus ridership increased by 27% in just one year and the number of people being overexposed to nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant linked to road traffic, fell by 90%.

And while Dunkirk is completely free, others have adopted other models, such as age-based criteria — in Lille and Strasbourg, for example, bus travel is free for those under 18. Free weekend travel, meanwhile, is offered for everyone in Nantes, Rouen and Nancy.

Elsewhere, according to a 2025 report by Italian researchers, fare-free public transport has been rolled out in 100 places across the world, notably in the US, Brazil and Poland. Estonia’s capital Tallinn introduced free public transport to its 450,000 residents in 2013, and Luxembourg became the first nation in the world where all public transport is free (except for first class on trains) in 2020. Iowa City eliminated bus fares in August 2023, paid for with a one percent increase in utility taxes and doubling most public parking rates. The two-year pilot led to ridership exceeding pre-covid levels by 18%.

And the cost to Dunkirk’s budget is €17 million out of the city’s €500 million annual budget. “The money serves the population, it helps workers, but also families, for leisure, to attend healthcare,” says Montagne.

Surveys during Dunkirk’s 2020 municipal elections even found that 99% of respondents ranked the free bus service as the most important public policy.

And it’s a trend gaining momentum, as more places are now treating buses and mobility as a public good and not a paid privilege. On January 1, 2026, buses and regional trains became free across France’s Lens-Liévin, Hénin-Carvin and Béthune-Bruay metropolitan areas, making it the largest fare-free public transport network in France.

“There is strong demand for free transit,” says Huré, “and I believe it will continue.”

ABOVE A bus in Dunkirk