Missing during confinement, they are already back. Rush hours, which spoil the journey of thousands of Ile-de-France travelers. But reducing them would be good for everyone. First, it would improve comfort, then overcrowding has a disincentive effect on public transport, and it would thus avoid the transfer to the automobile, which is much more polluting, and finally, smoothing attendance allows an optimization of public transport. And if for a while we believed that confinement and the development of teleworking could go in this direction, a study conducted by
Paris Region Institute (IPR) and unveiled this Tuesday, indicates that these expectations must be moderate.
Partner of the study, the company Kisio analyzed the GPS traces left by a panel of 700,000 Ile-de-France residents by focusing on three major travel corridors: Argenteuil / Colombes – Paris, Aulnay-sous-Bois / Blanc-Mesnil – Paris and Cergy-Pontoise – West of Paris. However, if during confinement “the use curve of the mass transit [transport par voie ferrée] flattened to join that of the road, notes Nicolas Cosson, president of Kisio, from the deconfinement, there was a reappearance of load peaks over the day. “Thus on the Argenteuil-Paris corridor, in October 2021, we find the 10,000 travelers at 8 am, before Covid-19.
A mixed telework effect
One would have thought that teleworking would reduce these peaks in the morning and evening. But not really. “The impact of teleworking is that it creates a very strong gap depending on the day,” notes Sylvie Charles, director of Transilien SNCF. There is a lot of teleworking on Mondays and Fridays with an overcrowding of transport lines on Tuesdays and Thursdays. According to long-term simulations carried out for the study, teleworking would lead at rush hour and on the corridors mentioned, to a 15% drop in attendance on Friday against only 2% on Tuesday. This would ultimately lead to underuse on Friday and still overuse on Tuesday. “Which doesn’t change the problem much,” admits Sylvie Charles.
Another effect of the coronavirus epidemic is the need for space. The study analyzed the simulations of real estate loans offered by the company Pretto, and it emerges that population movements from Paris to the inner suburbs or outer suburbs, which already exist, are increasing. At the same time, “movements from the outer suburbs and the provinces to Paris have sharply decreased”, indicates Fouad Awada, director of the IPR. Now, he continues, “the more you live in the outer suburbs, the more it increases the load on the mass transit rush hour “.
Companies attracted to Paris
At the same time, companies seem to have taken notice of teleworking and tend to reduce their office space. There is thus “at least 20% of surface area savings in post-Covid transactions,” suggests the IPR study. “Demand is refocusing on Paris, analyzes Fouad Awada. There is a new trend towards the accentuated metropolization of jobs. “Except that” this centrifugal trend of housing combined with the centripetal trend of jobs, it promises to overload the lines. »And so rush hour …
“Once again, the invisible hand of Adam Smith will not be enough”, concludes Sylvie Charles who calls for working “hand in hand between Ile-de-France Mobilités, employers’ and union organizations, prefecture”, for example to better distribute on working days. To “thwart this trend, the objective is to expand the hypercentre,” says Fouad Awada, who quotes the Greater Paris project. But it won’t be for now.
And the car in all of this?
Unfortunately for the planet, after confinement, the car gained shares in the mass transit. If the latter is 80% of what it was at the end of 2019, “the road has experienced a greater increase during the recovery, details Fouad Awada, director of the Paris Region Institute. It is 110% of what it was before Covid-19 and even 133% for traffic jams in Ile-de-France during rush hour ”. To reduce the share of the car, the study recommends promoting cycling + intermodality mass transit. “80 to 90% of Ile-de-France residents live within 3 km of a train station, a distance that is largely feasible by bicycle,” indicates Sylvie Charles, director of Transilien SNCF. We deploy secure shelters for bicycles near stations, but rare are the stations in Ile-de-France on which the cycle paths fall and there is a vast field of work there. “