Paper short abstract:

Luxembourg’s transition to fare-free public transport was charged with utopian ideals, from mobility justice and sustainability to unchecked movement and individual freedom. Yet amid restrictions imposed during the COVID pandemic, people developed their own real-utopian visions of free mobility.

Paper long abstract:

Luxembourg’s transition to fare-free public transportation (FFPT) on March 1, 2020 was charged with myriad utopian visions. The policy (devised by the government with little input from civil society) was feted with a “Mobility Day” festival, with hyperbolic advertising comparing #FreeMobility to the “First Step on the Moon.” While the idiom of “free mobility” first and foremost references fare abolition – a move linked to ideals of mobility justice and sustainability – it also connotes freedom to move wherever and whenever one chooses. This idea of unchecked movement is tinged with (neo)liberal logics of individual freedoms, consistent with broader efforts to rebrand public transportation as an individual rather than collective experience.

The freedoms promised by #FreeMobility seemed to vanish two weeks later with the arrival of COVID and the implementation of movement restrictions. Yet paradoxically, many people who had previously been hypermobile in their everyday lives expressed feelings of freedom from the pressures of commuting for work and began to reconsider which types of im/mobilities are essential or harmful to their personal flourishing, their relationships, and the planet. Thus, mobile people developed their own real-utopian visions of free mobility that go beyond those proposed by legislators and urban planners.

Drawing from ethnographic research in Luxembourg between 2018 and 2022 – including interviews with transit users before and after the transition to FFPT, participant observation in transit spaces and at mobility events, and tracking official discourses and public debates – this paper explores competing configurations of utopian ideals of free mobility.