Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K
The Largest Free Mass Transit Experiment in the World
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After chewing this up a bit, I was struck by how Tallin, Estonia, is only about 20 years into the automobile age, due to having spent from August 1939 - July 1941, and from the fall of 1944 to 1994 under Soviet domination (From July 1941 to the autumn on 1944 the city was under German domination.)
In the period since 1994, Estonia has relished it's freedom. And a lot of that freedom includes the freedom, if one can afford it, to drive one's own car.
In a sense, Estonia today, is like the US in the 1920s where, for the first time, people do NOT have to take a tram, a train or a bus. For the first time, people do not have to smell people en route to work, to shop, or to go to entertainment venues.
Making bus service free in Tallin, IMO, had a less significant ridership effect than doing something similar might in a city long accustomed to bumper to bumper traffic.
In Estonia (as well as in Russia) and in most former members of the Soviet Bloc, people that can afford a car are just having too much fun driving to return to Soviet style buses, no matter how sleek they appear to be.