Motivations and characteristics of FFPT policies in selected Brazilian municipalities

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53613/josum.2023.v3.010

Keywords:

Fare Free Public Transport, Public Transport, urban mobility

Abstract

While today Brazil is the world’s number three country with the highest number of municipalities with fare-free public transport (FFPT) in place, research about the motivations and characteristics behind ‘Tarifa Zero’, as the policy is called across Brazil, remains limited. In the framework of a collaborative research project, we conducted fieldwork in 15 selected municipalities throughout March and April 2022, combining semi-structured interviews with governmental representatives and key actors involved in the process of applying FFPT. The main aim of our research is to understand better the motivations behind FFPT, as well as the policy’s operational, economic and political aspects. We conclude that the municipalities studied follow a number of patterns regarding population size, location in the southeast part of Brazil, a small number of bus routes, lack of (financial) planning behind FFPT, and predominantly social motivation behind the implementation.

Author Biographies

Thais Fernandes Pereira, Universidade de São Paulo

Thais Fernandes Pereira is a researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP). She graduated in Social Sciences at the same university and is currently a master's degree candidate in Political Science, developing a thesis about FFPT in Brazil. Worked on research projects at the Brazilian Institute of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and at the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP (IEA-USP). His topics of interest are: public policies, sustainable urban mobility, political theory, comparative politics, among others.

Marijke Vermander, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium)

Marijke Vermander is a researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). She is the author of the master thesis “Exploring Fare-Free Public Transport in Brazil. Rationales and characteristics of Tarifa Zero policies in small Brazilian municipalities”, published in 2021. Afterwards she continued her research on FFPT in Brazil while coordinating a research project in collaboration with the Federal University of Viçosa (Minas Gerais). Besides FFPT and other mobility-related topics, her research projects have focused on the cost of urban sprawl, student housing and social housing in Flanders (Belgium).

Wojciech Kębłowski, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium)

Wojciech Kębłowski is Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). As urban geographer working on transport and alternatives to capitalism, Wojciech focuses on two main themes. First, he is interested in bringing critical social theory and decolonial theory to transport geography, studying the political economy and governance of “sustainable” transport policies, transport in/formality, and publicness of public transport. Wojciech has extensively explored the practices of fare evasion and control, and the policy of fare abolition, otherwise known as fare-free public transport. Second, Wojciech studies diverse alternatives to the capitalist mode of producing urban space and society. These include practices inspired by the notion of circular economy and degrowth, and various examples of citizen participation, for instance the policy of participatory budgeting. His work centres upon how, why and for whom these “alternatives” emerge, and how they are transferred and “mobilised” between urban contexts.

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Published

2023-03-20

How to Cite

Fernandes Pereira, T., Vermander, M., & Kębłowski, W. (2023). Motivations and characteristics of FFPT policies in selected Brazilian municipalities. Journal of Sustainable Urban Mobility, 3(1), 122–138. https://doi.org/10.53613/josum.2023.v3.010

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2023): Thematic Dossier Fare-Free: energy transition, fighting inequalities, and expanding democracy in the cities

Section

Scientific papers

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