Number of cars drops for first time in Ile-de-France

In Paris, the fleet has been recoiling since 2012. The health crisis has increased the phenomenon, and led to a decrease across the region.

by

Will the car soon be stored among the objects of the past, like a dusty relic of the century of oil? In France, the number of vehicles in service continues to increase. But, in the Paris region, this is no longer the case. For the first time, in 2020, the car park entered in Ile-de-France has even remote, indicates a study published on April 21 by the Parisian planning workshop (APUR), an analysis agency related to the town hall from Paris. “A phenomenon of decline in the registered park is set up” in the first French region, write the authors, evoking a “break” after decades of rise.

The decrease recorded in 2020 is nothing massive. At 1 January 2021, the Ile-de-France had 8,561 cars and small utilities registered less than a year earlier, a decline of barely 0.2%. This first decline does not constitute a statistical accident. In 2014, the region’s fleet had increased by 90,868 vehicles. The next five years, the progression has stopped weakening. Until becoming almost zero, then lead to a real drop in 2020.

The explanation? Several factors contributed to this reversal of trend. In 2020, the sanitary crisis and successive confines “have dramatically hampered the purchase of new vehicles” throughout France, notes the Apur, especially as the semiconductor crisis limited production. The hardening of the technical control rules in 2018 probably also “accelerated the exit of the old vehicles of the park without being replaced by new”, adds the study.

Alternatives more in More Developed

Beyond these one-off elements, more decisive reasons may justify the slightest rise, and then the decline in the number of vehicles in circulation on the roads of Paris and its region. In the capital and its nearby suburbs, basically, why possess a car? Many Parisians do not even ask the question anymore. To move, they have more and more developed collective transport (RER, metro, tramway), and an offer nourished with electric scooters and self-service bicycles, despite the difficulties of Vélib ‘. Not to mention taxis and their new competitors, like Uber.

Conversely, the individual car, a long time symbol of freedom, is increasingly associated with an accumulation of constraints and charges: a high purchase price, maintenance and expensive parking, rules that do not cease to complicate the life of motorists. Like low-emission zones (ZFE), prohibited at some of the vehicles, the most polluting. Or the future “soothing zone” of the center of Paris, in which the cars in transit can not in principle penetrate from 2024, if the socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, and his ecologists allies carry out their project. Do not discard!

You have 51.97% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.

/Media reports.