🚌 Transit without tickets

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva built the campaign for his third term on a simple promise of “including” Brazil’s poor in the federal budget. And few issues touch low-income Brazilians as closely as the price of getting to work, school or a doctor’s appointment. Nationwide, public transportation fares have risen above inflation of late, up 7.46% in the 12 months through August.

With this in mind, Lula asked his Finance Ministry in late August for a nationwide study on making bus fares free, a proposal that delights commuters but alarms fiscal hawks, who view it more as a helicopter-money proposal than a policy with positive ripple effects on the economy. The call also revives a fraught debate in a country still haunted by a 2013 wave of protests for urban mobility that snowballed into wider, unruly demonstrations.

Zero-fare buses are no longer theoretical in Brazil…

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