### Reader’s letter to The Guardian, 8th May 2025 ###
Dear Editor,
I greatly enjoyed John Brunton’s article on his journey around Luxembourg (The Guardian, 7th May 2025, link below). Indeed, this reminded me of several cycling and public-transport visits that I have made to that region (including Trier and Metz: also great locations!). Here it was good that Luxembourg offers public transport free-of-charge to both locals and visitors. Excellent!
But I was pondering how Luxembourg (a tiny country) can afford to fund that and my thoughts immediately switched to the global corporations which channel their revenue through Luxembourg (and other tax-havens).
Here in Cologne (and pretty much everywhere else) small businesses are closing down and city-centres decaying as online multi-nationals hoover up business from smaller players. These corporations have, alongside massive economies-of-scale, amazing (and also very dubious) tax-arrangements which are tolerated by both Brussels and national governments. The cherry on top of this rather putrid cake was when Jean-Claude Juncker, the architect of Luxembourg’s tax-avoidance bazaar, was appointed president of the European Commission.
For me, public transport should be efficient and affordable. But when it is completely free, I think we need to look behind the scenes a little because, as someone once said: There is no * free * lunch … or (truly) free bus!
Yours,
Alan Mitcham
Link to original article: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/may/07/luxembourg-free-public-transport-mullerthal-wine-vineyards
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