MOBILITY: IT IS CHANGING, BUT…

With traffic up by 11% over the first nine months of 2022 compared with 2021*, the trend is confirmed: the bicycle is the big winner in a world of changing mobility, at least in urban areas. To the point of challenging the omnipresence of the car?

More bikes, fewer cars? The impression that the number of cyclists is increasing at a rapid rate along the main urban routes is not an illusion, confirms Mathieu Chassignet, mobility engineer at the regional office of ADEME Hauts-de-France. «The craze didn’t start with Covid, but cycling has in fact increased by more than a third in France between 2019 and 2022. And the increase is continuing». Very much in vogue at the start of the pandemic due to health reasons, the «velotaf»(“commuter-bike”) has taken hold, with many employees turning to cycling to avoid public transport at rush hour.

A Series Of Divisions

But this diversification of travel modes does not affect all people in the same way, explains Mathieu Chassignet, pointing to a series of divisions that affect socio-professional categories in particular: «Twenty years ago, cycling was more common among people of modest means, but the trend is now reversing. Those who take up cycling today are often executives and people from higher socio-professional groups. Age also plays a role, and this is the main warning of the studies carried out in this field: «children are travelling less and less by bike. Between 2008 and 2019, the practice has halved among the under-18s, mainly due to the fear of accidents but also taking into account a social norm which now means that children are less and less likely to be allowed to travel alone in public spaces.» In fact, one in two schoolchildren is dropped off in a car by their parents, compared with one in four at the beginning of the 2000s. Another distinction is that of gender: «the practices of men and women are different. Men travel five to ten times more than women on two motorised wheels and are more likely to take up cycling. Women travel more on foot or by public transport. The last major difference is the geographical criterion: «in rural and peri-urban areas, cycling continues to stagnate», explains Mathieu Chassignet, for whom this is no coincidence: «the big cities are the only areas where an effort has been made to make cycling safer, for example by generalising the 30 km/h zones. In suburban areas, nothing really challenges the place of the car.