2024-02-02 16:38:04
At a time when the climate emergency calls for a shift in public transport, buses continue to slow down. This is shown by a study by the National Federation of Transport User Associations (Fnaut) presented on Friday February 2. Based on data provided by the RATP, it compared the speed of traffic in and around the capital over time. The trend is unambiguous: between 2000 and 2019, the pace gradually slowed down, going from 13.3 to 10.6 km/h in Paris and from 18.3 to 14.9 km/h in the inner suburbs.
There are many explanations, says Bruno Gazeau, president of Fnaut. He mentions in particular the“attitude of delivery drivers who, lacking parking spaces, park almost anywhere and the need to share reserved lanes – the number of which remains insufficient – with other users, in particular cyclists sometimes in large numbers or using particularly bulky cargo bikes.”
The Covid parenthesis
Even though automobile traffic has halved since 1990 (two-thirds of Parisians no longer own a car), it also has a strong influence on the speed of bus circulation, as shown by the Covid period, during which it had gone up to 15 km/h.
A second study, carried out in partnership with the engineering firm Beemotion, reveals a similar trend in Nantes, this time between 2014 and 2019, based on two lines, scrutinized at off-peak times and at off-peak hours. tip, and segment by segment. On one of them, the C5, the journey time has increased, in five years, from seventeen to twenty minutes.
“On this line, the drop in speed is due in particular to the increase in ridership (+ 69%), which causes longer boarding and descent times (fifty-five seconds more on the entire line) », notes Benoît Oillo, director of Beemotion. Hence the recommendations aimed at equipping buses with higher capacity, having several wider doors, and authorizing passengers to use any of them to access the vehicle.
Among the networks, hares and many tortoises
In France, Fnaut deplores the lack of harmonized data to objectify the evolution of bus speeds. But if we are to believe the Public Transport Union, in 2021, in areas with more than 250,000 inhabitants, fifteen networks showed a slowdown trend (Angers, Grenoble, Le Havre, Nice, Rouen, Toulon, etc. ), while seven others experienced stability or an increase in traffic speed (Valence, Valenciennes, Lens, Saint-Étienne, etc.).
That same year, Nancy (10.6 km/h) and Marseille (12 km/h) were among the turtles, while Rennes (19.1 km/h) and Nantes (17.8 km/h) were more of a hare. .
Fnaut, in any case, warns of the overall slowdown observed. Because, insists its president Bruno Gazeau, “speed, associated with punctuality and fluidity of the offer, is one of the arguments likely to make people abandon the car”.
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