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Transport, Fabien Roussel

Everyday transport: Free public transport in the metropolitan areas

Direction of change: increase, compared with current law.

The lever. Everyday journeys: fares and free travel on buses, trams, metros and TER regional trains, season tickets and passes, metropolitan RER networks, on-demand transport and services in rural areas. Direction rule: ↑ cheaper public transport or wider service.

« mettre en place la gratuité des transports publics dans les métropoles, comme nous le demandons partout »1

Translation by the editorsintroduce free public transport in the metropolitan areas, as we are calling for everywhere

Words of Fabien Roussel, pcf.fr, « Discours de Fabien Roussel - Fête de l'Huma 31 » (Toulouse), 2 June 2026. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme.

No programme released. Positions taken from public statements, words of associates or documents of the candidate’s party, each dated and sourced; last recorded on 18 October 2026.

Encoding

Position linked to an option of the cost schedule, with no parameter to set: see the costing.

Costing

Announced by the candidate

not announced

The cited source does not cost this measure.

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

−€1.3bn

per year for the public accounts, new spending.

The calculation

  • Completely free urban public transport in the 28 provincial networks with a metro or tramway (fare revenue lost, 2019 level): Option costed by the source: a cost of €1.25bn per year.

Assumption by the editors. Partial costing. Reading adopted: free transport « dans les métropoles » [“in the metropolitan areas”] outside Paris is costed by the lost fare revenue of the 28 networks outside Paris with a metro or tramway (€1.25bn in 2019, Cour des comptes), the best approximation found of the networks of the 21 metropolitan areas outside Paris: it counts a few conurbations that are not metropolitan areas and leaves out metropolitan areas with neither metro nor tramway. Not costed (partial costing): the Métropole du Grand Paris, whose network, that of Île-de-France Mobilités, covers the whole region and cannot be split in the sources read (free transport across all of Île-de-France: €3.6bn in the cost schedule). On 8 April 2026, the candidate called for « la gratuité des transports publics urbains » [“free urban public transport”] with no scope; the June wording, more recent, limits it to the metropolitan areas.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Mobility organising authorities (intermunicipal bodies, regions, Île-de-France Mobilités) define pricing policy and set fares (Code des transports, art. L. 1221-5). Employers cover half of their employees' public transport season ticket (Code du travail, art. L. 3261-2; 75% for public employees since 1 September 2023), i.e. €1,284m in 2023, and those with 11 or more employees pay the versement mobilité (mobility levy) (€11.3bn in 2023). In 2019, fare revenue covered 41% of the operating expenditure of urban public transport, about €5.7bn out of €13.9bn; 46 areas offer entirely free transport (Cour des comptes, September 2025). Metropolitan regional express services (SERM) have had a legal framework since the act of 27 December 2023.

Horizon. Full year, €bn per year, in 2019 euros (2017 for Île-de-France alone), not updated to the 2032 horizon. Cost for general government as a whole, whichever authority bears it.

Limits. Static costing: free public transport costs first of all the lost fare revenue, offset by the budget of the transport authorities (classified here as spending). Not counted: the additional service that higher ridership would require (the Cour des comptes considers free transport risky for large networks), savings on ticketing and inspection (€250m at best in Île-de-France according to the Senate), or the saving made by employers on their contribution to season tickets (€1,284m in 2023, included in fare revenue); shifting this share onto the versement mobilité (mobility levy) is a means of funding, not a reduction in cost. The first three options do not add up: all of France = Île-de-France + the rest of France, for different years (€5.7bn in 2019 versus 3.6 + 1.5 = €5.1bn). The fourth, the 28 networks outside Île-de-France with a metro or tramway (€1,254m of revenue in 2019 out of €1,638m outside Île-de-France, Cour des comptes, table no. 1), is the best approximation read for the networks of the métropoles outside Île-de-France: it counts a few conurbations that are not métropoles and leaves out métropoles with neither metro nor tramway; it is included in the rest of France and does not add to the other options. Outside the scope for lack of a source read: TER and regional trains, intercity coaches, partial free transport (young people, weekends; Lille and Nantes give local examples at €8m and €16m per year), fare reductions, rail pass, metropolitan RER (major projects are costed at the announced amount).

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

This lever in the method · Costing for Fabien Roussel

  1. pcf.fr, « Discours de Fabien Roussel - Fête de l'Huma 31 » (Toulouse), 2 June 2026. Words of Fabien Roussel. Position taken from public statements, not from a written programme. Read the source (pcf.fr, « Discours de Fabien Roussel - Fête de l'Huma 31 » (Toulouse)).

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