To decongest the roads, reduce atmospheric pollution or lower CO2 emissions linked to transport, the great tendency to reverse is that of autolism.
In other words, the tendency that we have to travel alone in our cars.
Developing soft mobility (cycling, walking) and public transport is part of the solution.
Daily carpooling too.
Especially in sparsely populated areas and for journeys where even the bus is not an economically viable solution.
For years we have been talking about it, this daily carpooling has struggled to take off in France.
All the same, carpooling operators are multiplying and communities and businesses are now getting their hands dirty.
Are the planets finally aligning?
First, go to the nearest carpooling stop and report your presence on a mobile application.
The request is then displayed on the light panels placed upstream of the stop and on the smartphones of the drivers connected to the application.
The first interested party stops, takes charge of the passenger and drops them off at the desired stop.
If carpooling is presented as the hitchhiking of yesteryear, the lines that Ecov is setting up in around twenty territories in France are intended to be as practical as the bus.
Of course, without changing to fixed and predefined schedules.
But on the Lane line, which the start-up operates between Bourgoin-Jallieu and Lyon, "the number of registered drivers is such that the average waiting time for carpooling is around 4 minutes 30," Thomas Matagne indicated at the end of November. , president of Ecov.
A rate comparable to a metro line, although we are in a sparse area and on journeys not from center to center, but much more often from outskirts to outskirts ”.
Where public transport is scarce ... or even non-existent.
In the shadow of long-distance carpooling
The need to get this mobility solution off the ground has been mentioned for years. The advantages are manifold. Both for users (purchasing power gains) and for the community (decongestion of roads, reduction in pollution, reduction in CO2 emissions *, etc.).
But unlike the long-distance version, driven by the Blablacar success story, everyday carpooling is still skating. The Ministry of Ecological Transition still mentions 900,000 people car pooling every day to go to work. "But this figure includes informal carpooling, that is to say with his spouse, the neighbor, the children who are dropped off on the way to school, relativizes Joachim Renaudin, director of studies of Karos, another carpooling operator. Daily. Of course, that matters, but this informal carpooling is based on declarations and is more difficult to measure. "
Ecov, Karos and others (Klaxit, Blablacar Daily…) are looking to develop another daily carpooling.
More formal.
More flexible above all, by using the latest technologies to connect people who do not know each other "and who will carpool together on the way out but not necessarily on the return, one day but not necessarily the next", describes Joachim Renaudin.
This formal carpooling represented a little less than 250,000 trips made last November (the best month of 2021), according to the Carpool Proof Register (RPC), a government platform that collects data from twenty short-distance carpooling operators, which will add ten more soon.
Autosolism, this tendency to reverse
It is already that, one could say to oneself, so much the short-distance carpooling could seem compromised when coming out of confinement. “If each new wave hurts, attendance picks up fairly quickly on our lines, observes Thomas Matagne. Since September, it has even started very strongly on Lane, with attendance rates above pre-Covid levels. The rise in fuel prices is certainly playing a role. "But there is also, among many of our users, the desire not to return to the world before," adds the president of Ecov. An improvement that Joachim Renaudin also notes for Karos, "and which is generally true for all operators", he explains.
All the same, 250,000 trips per month is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of trips made each day in France. Or 181 million daily in 2019, according to the latest national survey on the mobility of French people. The car dominates outrageously. It is used in 70% of home-work trips. “Above all, the average filling rate of these vehicles has declined over the past decades, points out Aurélien Bigo, researcher on questions of energy transition in transport, associated with the“ energy and prosperity ”chair. It is only 1.3, and even 1.1 for home-work. It is this tendency towards autosolism that we must succeed in reversing. ".
How? 'Or' What ?
By developing soft mobility (cycling, walking, etc.) and public transport, we usually respond.
But these two options have their limits.
The first when the distances to be covered increase, the second when there are not enough passengers to take.
“The average cost of a bus per kilometer traveled is 7-8 euros.
If it is occupied by only a few users, very quickly, you will have done better to pay them the taxi, ”illustrates Claude Faucher, general delegate of the Union of public and rail transport (UTP).
Is the LOM a game-changer?
Therefore, in many cases, carpooling becomes the main way to fight autosolism. "It is more and more integrated into the toolbox of the authorities organizing transport", continues Claude Faucher. Thomas Matagne sees it as one of the major contributions of the Mobility Orientation Law (LOM), promulgated at the end of 2019. “It allows communities to partially finance carpooling systems,” he explains. “This also applies to companies that can integrate carpooling into sustainable mobility packages to promote soft mobility for their employees,” adds Joachim Renaudin.
Result: the business model of daily carpooling is changing. The cost of the service is no longer borne so much by those who use it, but by communities and businesses. Connecting a metropolis to its periphery - as Ecov is doing between Lyon and Bourgoin ** - is no longer the only configuration imagined. "Carpooling can also be used to connect the cities of the periphery to each other, without going through the city center," adds Thomas Matagne. This is the spirit of the line that we launched in February in the Rennes metropolitan area. "
For its part, Karos makes carpooling at the service of intermodality. The operator creates virtual carpool networks based on the travel habits of users of his application. "In the thirteen territories where we are, our algorithms integrate the public transport network into the calculation and can thus offer to reduce the carpool to the latter when it is the most relevant option", details Joachim Renaudin. So much for Ecov and Karos. But each operator cultivates its peculiarities. We could also cite Klaxit, which presents itself as the specialist in inter-company carpooling, with more than 300 partner firms. “Another interesting configuration,” comments Claude Faucher.Especially when it comes to facilitating the arrival of employees in activity zones that are not always well served and / or at staggered schedules. "
Create a carpooling system
One thing is certain: carpooling lines are multiplying as new operators are created and as communities and companies place calls for tenders.
Joachim Renaudin sees the alignment of the first two planets necessary for the take-off of carpooling in France.
But, like Thomas Matagne, he hopes for a third, just as essential: the creation of a real “carpooling system”, “in the same way as we did for cycling, in particular by increasing the number of cycle paths. », Insists the founder of Ecov.
Operators are already doing this. Most thus provide a return by taxi or VTC after a certain time of waiting for the carpool. Also in many cases, the carpooling option is included in the public transport subscription in the areas where the services are deployed. The creation of reserved lanes for carpooling - in Grenoble, Lyon, Rennes, etc. while waiting for the Paris ring road in 2024 - also helps to create this ecosystem. But it is possible to go further by drawing inspiration from what is being done in North America. Aurélien Bigo, for example, quotes Netlift, a young Canadian company, "which guarantees a parking space for carpoolers". An argument that could hit the mark in France.
But the incentives to carpool will not be enough, according to the researcher.
"If this mobility is not taking off in France, it is also and above all because it is confronted with the possibility that the majority of us have of getting into our car alone, which remains the best option. effective and least restrictive.
This is also what must be changed if we want to tackle autosolism ”.
Politically, it is more difficult.
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* The transport sector is the leading source of greenhouse gases in mainland France (29.7% of CO2 equivalent emissions in 2017).
The only one whose emissions have not fallen in the last ten years.
** But also Grenoble and the Vercors or Chambéry and the Bauges
Carpooling
Mobility
Transport
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