A free travel pass allows free and unlimited travel within a system. Free passes are sometimes granted to particular social sectors, for example students, old people, children, employees ("job ticket") and the physical or mentally disabled. In the United States, an employer can pay for a portion of a travel pass without that payment being taxed. So, transit systems allow employers to pay the system directly and to distribute the passes to employees.
Free or Zero-fare public transport services are funded in full by means other than collecting a fare from passengers.
Zero-fare services may be funded by national, regional or local government through taxation or by commercial sponsorship by businesses. They usually use relatively small vehicles such as buses and trams.
Several mid-size European cities and many smaller towns around the world have converted their entire bus networks to zero-fare.
Local zero-fare shuttles or inner-city loops are far more common than city-wide systems.
On 29 February 2020, Luxembourg became the first country in the world to make all public transport in the country (buses, trams, and trains) free to use.
Some means of rail-based public transport are also tourist attractions and/or well known landmarks in their own right. These include San Francisco's famous cable cars, the Molli steam powered train in Bad Doberan, the kusttram along the whole Flemish coast, the Schwebebahn Wuppertal, the Seattle Monorail, and the Christchurch Tram
Edmund Barton
Sir Edmund Barton (18 January 1849 – 7 January 1920) was the first Prime Minister of Australia. He was born in the suburb of Glebe in 1849 and died from heart failure in the Blue Mountains in 1920.
He was elected to the first Australian parliament in 1901 as the member for Hunter. He had a big part in making Australia a nation. His government passed laws stopping non-white people from coming to Australia and allowing women to vote in elections. After he was Prime Minister he became a judge of the High Court.
Barton was chosen as the Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1883. He served as the speaker until 1887. In 1891, he was a member of the committee writing the Constitution of Australia. In 1900, he led a group of Australians to London to present the country's first Constitution to the British Parliament. Barton was elected as Australia's first Prime Minister on 1 January 1901, when the new constitution went into effect. He also served as the Minister External Affairs (foreign policy and international relations). He resigned on 24 September 1903, and became a senior judge in the new High Court of Australia, and held that position until his death in 1920.
Crofton, British Columbia
Crofton is a town on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. It is a small town with only 2,500 people living in it. Crofton lies alongside the water. A miner named Henry Croft founded the town in 1902 so he could do better mining on the mountains around Crofton. But soon after, the mining stopped. In 1956, a mill that makes paper was built in Crofton. Today, that mill has over 1,000 workers. Because Crofton is on the water, it has a ferry that takes people to Salt Spring Island, which is nearby.
Zabno
Zabno (Polish: Żabno) is a town in Poland. 4,275 people live there. Zabno is near a bigger city, Tarnow.
Western Australia
Western Australia is one of the eight states and territories of Australia. It is the largest state in Australia, with about 33% of the land area of the mainland. It has a population of about two million people. Its capital city is Perth.
Most of Western Australia (WA) is made of very ancient rocks from the Proterozoic era. These rocks include a great deal of iron ore, which is exported to Japan and elsewhere. Other metals such as nickel, copper, lithium and gold are also found in the area. The area was connected to India and Africa in the Neoproterozoic era, and stayed connected until the break-up of Gondwana about 150 to 50 million years ago (mya).
Unfortunately, the soils have low amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen, and so are not very fertile.
In 1827, a Captain in the British Navy, James Stirling, sailed up the Swan River and liked what he saw. He told the British government, and in 1829, Britain sent settlers to Western Australia. On June 18, 1829, the new Governor James Stirling claimed all the land of Australia that was not already included in New South Wales as the new colony of Western Australia. In 1868, Britain stopped sending convicts.
Until 1901, Australia did not exist - it was six separate colonies governed by Britain. This worked well when everybody was British and there were only a few people. But now there were thousands of people and many of them had never been to Britain, an eight-month journey away by sea.
They decided to join together to form one new country, the Commonwealth of Australia. This was called Federation, and happened in 1901. Western Australia did not want to join, because the other colonies were thousands of kilometres away. They joined when the other colonies promised to build a railway to Perth.
In 1933, the Western Australian people did not want to be part of Australia any more. The main reason was that Western Australia had to give money to the rest of Australia to pay for national services like the army and education, but they were not seeing the benefits. As well, the Great Depression had happened and many people were homeless and poor all over the world, including Western Australia.
The government decided to hold a referendum and ask the people whether they wanted to start their own country, and 68% said yes. However, the rest of Australia and the British Parliament stopped it.
After that, things got back to normal. The Great Depression ended and the Second World War began, and many Western Australians went off to fight. Some of them had to stay here, because in 1942, the Japanese bombed the town of Broome in the far north.
When the war ended, a lot of people from Europe who had lost their homes in the war came to Western Australia, as land was still very cheap. In the 1960s, iron ore was found in the north of the state, which could be made into steel. This discovery made Western Australia very rich, and iron ore still brings in a lot of money.
Perth grew from being a small town to being a big city in just 30 years. By 1985 it had over a million people and is still getting bigger today. Due to the mining boom in the state, there has been an influx of people from the Eastern states to take advantage of the higher wages in industry.
South Australia
South Australia is one of the six states of Australia. The capital city is Adelaide.
South Australia is in the southern central part of the country. It is one of the driest parts of the continent. South Australia gets very little rain.
The state has a total land area of 984,377 km² (380,070 sq mi). It is the fourth largest of Australia's states and territories. In 2006 there were 1,554,397 people living in South Australia.
South Australia was a "freely-settled", planned British province. Settlement began on December 28, 1836. This was when the state was "proclaimed" at The Old Gum Tree by Governor Hindmarsh. The aim was to create the province as a center of civilization for free immigrants, promising civil liberties and religious tolerance.
The state is known for its festivals and fine wine.
The highest temperature recorded was 50.7°C at Oodnadatta on 2 January 1960.
The coldest temperature recorded was -8.2°C at Yongala on 20 July 1976.
The highest rainfall recorded was 272.6 mm at Motpena on 14 March 1989.
Richard Roeper
Richard Roeper (born October 17, 1959 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American movie critic, television personality, journalist, and historian. He starred on the American television program "At the Movies" with Roger Ebert from 2000 to 2008 as Gene Siskel's successor. Roeper also writes about movies for an American newspaper, the "Chicago Sun-Times".