Free public transport. Efficient and fun.

More and more cities choose to provide some short of free public transport service. Just yesterday we went on a night trip on our own City Hopper. It is a free ferry service running every 30 minutes from early in the morning until midnight along the central part of the Brisbane river. All this time in Brisbane I hadn't had the chance to see the city from this point of view and I have to say that I found out that it is an amazing view. Especially passing under the Story Bridge with the lights on and looking at the high rise buildings in front, is one of the best views of the city.

And this is not the only free public transport service we have in Brisbane. There is also the City Loop and the Spring Hill Loop bus services that provide high frequency public transport in the CBD and the Spring Hill areas.

During the first week of 2013, I traveled with my wife and kids to Melbourne. Most of our trips around this great city, we did them on the City Circle. Again a free tram service traveling along Melbourne city centre is the most convenient way to see the sights. These historic trams are the best ambassador of the public transportation system of a city that every year ranks in the top place of the most livable cities in the world.

In fact this free tram service is according to CNN one of the 50 reasons that Melbourne is the world's most livable city. Of course it is also because it has the best souvlaki outside Athens but that is another story.

In one of my last projects in Europe the online mobility management toolbox I included in the best practices database two free public transportation systems in my birthplace Kavala. One of them, Sygkoinonia project, offering free bus services for everyone during the first early morning trips in the whole bus network, no longer exists. The other one, named "the small train", is still operating at the historic centre of the city taking tourists along the Ottoman and Byzantine monuments of Panagia peninsula but also helping the elderly that live in the area move around the city.

During the last decades there is a strong movement towards enhancing public transport in the cities as a way for a more sustainable urban development. Some cities have gone a step forward and introduced free public transport for their residents or even for everyone. The city of Hasselt in Belgium is a notable example: fares were abolished in 1997 and ridership was as much as "13 times higher" by 2006. Since 2013 Tallinn become the largest city offering free public transport for its residents. Huge spending on expensive road projects seem to fail on an economical level but also on providing the expected transport service results. And as the old a world-renowned photograph that was recently recreated suggests, public transport is the most efficient way of urban travel.