INTERVIEW
Thursday, December 5, France will experience a major social movement with a national strike on the entire territory. Many unions and organizations have called for a strike to oppose the government's pension reform. SNCF and RATP have already announced that they will participate in the mobilization. To avoid the paralysis caused by the strike of public transport important in the system of French displacements, carpooling can be a solution. The president and founder of BlaBlaCar, Frédéric Mazzella, was on Europe 1 Sunday.
And if the social movements will certainly make grumpy, it will certainly not be the case at BlaBlaCar! During social movements, the most famous carpooling platform in France, with 17 million metropolitan users and 85 million worldwide, sees its number of registrants jump. Frédéric Mazzella explains: "On previous editions of social movements, we had up to a tenfold increase in the number of registered".
Commuting can save 100 to 200 euros per month
Nuance however, this increase does not concern the main application BlaBlaCar but his little sister, BlaBlaLines. The latter focuses on short-distance car-work-type carpools. "It is a little different but perfectly suited to the morning and evening journeys," says Frederic Mazzella, and is therefore positioned as a solution for Thursday's strike.
For drivers and passengers, carpooling also has financial appeal. "For the driver, it is 100 to 200 euros per month to save for commuting, which average 15 to 20 kilometers.We easily reach 2,000 euros over the year," says the founder of the carpool number 1 application. Moreover, this kind of trip costs about 2 euros for the passenger, who avoids a lot of expenses if he owns a car or if he comes from far to work.
Finally, and obviously, carpooling has an undeniable ecological aspect since, for an identical trip, 4 people traveling in the same car necessarily pollute less than if they drove each their own.