Germany To Test Free Public Transportation Service To Curb Air Pollution

It’s a sign of how seriously the EU is taking its environmental policies when even one of the cleanest countries in the world is in trouble for not being clean enough. Germany draws much of its power from green energy and has implemented widespread changes to become as environmentally friendly as possible. Unfortunately, air pollution is still an issue, which free public transportation might solve.

According to a report by the DW Akademie, the idea was first proposed via letter to European Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella by three ministers. The idea revolves around testing free rides in several cities along with implementing zones that are meant for low-emission vehicles. The hope is to encourage the proliferation of electric vehicles that include cars and buses.

This development turned out to be timely, as well, because the EU recently updated its emissions target. The new figures would have resulted in Germany spending up to $1.2 trillion to meet the target. With this new proposal, perhaps the country doesn’t have to go as high in terms of the costs.

On that note, the country faces several challenges if it wants to go ahead with this kind of arrangement. The first of which is the issue of where it’s going to get the electric buses that it would need to test the kind of free public transport services that it wants to implement.

While EVs are on the rise, they aren’t nearly on the same production numbers as conventional vehicles. As Futurism notes, making public transport free would also impact the financial state of the country since companies do get a substantial chunk of their revenue from the sale of tickets.

Taxpayers could end up having to foot the bill, as a result. With climate change being a particularly serious problem, however, it’s not hard to imagine the citizens being too upset with that fact.