Interview with Matthieu Theurier, vice-president of Rennes metropolis in charge of transport
Are traffic jams so important as what motorists have been feeling since the start of the school year?
We have returned to 102 or even 103% of frequentation of the bypass, compared to the front Covid, according to the Direction des routes de l’Ouest (Diro). What is basically not excessive, but we had become accustomed to less, with the health crisis and teleworking. The situation is especially complicated on the ring road and the penetrating ones (which lead to Rennes), but it is then quite uneven on the territory since in the intra-ring road, we are at 88% of car use.
At the time when the bypass was the least frequented, at the end of the first confinement in June 2020, however, we ultimately only had a 6% drop in car traffic; and that was enough so that there were no more traffic jams. So this is proof that it doesn’t take much to make them disappear.
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70% of trips in Rennes metropolitan area are made at the scale of its municipality, and 65% over a distance of less than 3 km. © Ouest-France
How to explain this situation ?
Home-to-work trips only represent 25% of our trips. The rest is dedicated to leisure and shopping. I think that we are seeing for this re-entry a form of return to the pre-crisis, a form of desire to go out after health constraints and this is normal. Public transport is not quite back to what it used to be before the health crisis (90%).
But above all, it is a shame to see that companies have given up on telecommuting when it is one of the solutions for companies that can. Just shifting the working hours by 15 or 20 minutes can limit traffic jams during peak hours.
What to do then?
The reality of travel in the metropolis is that 70% are made at the scale of its municipality, and 65% are less than 3 km. However, the car is still used in 40% of these trips and this, while there are in most cases alternatives to the car: public transport, walking or cycling. People who have these alternatives must prioritize them, so that those who live far from their place of work and have no other option, can continue to use their car. It is an act of solidarity.
Read also: Buses will soon be able to use the emergency lane to avoid traffic jams
Afterwards, we are working on these alternatives: we continue to develop cycle paths (+ 9% in attendance in Rennes), and significant investments are made throughout the metropolis to make cycling trips safer. Metro line B will open in early 2022 and priority bus routes will be created to make them more competitive than the car. This will further lead us to reduce the space of cars on urban roads.
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