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In March 2018, the Mayor of Paris proposed a free fare public transport policy to reduce road congestion. While this is a recurring proposition that many cities have experimented with, no academic paper has offered a comprehensive economic analysis to understand the expected effects of such a policy.The results from transport economics suggest that free fare public transport in Paris would not be able to significantly reduce congestion because it would have a low impact on the modal choice of car users. The case studies and simulations of transport models reach the same conclusions. They show that the effect of such a measure on congestion is very limited. In practice, only cities that have also pursued other goals may have retained a free fare policy.It emerges from this analysis of the literature that reducing reliance on cars requires a change in the relative cost of using a car or public transport. To achieve this objective, various measures should be considered: taxing car owners or car users (an urban road toll is one way to achieve this goal), improving the quality of public transport to reduce crowding, reducing the space devoted to cars, and promoting other modes of transport.