In order to assess the changes in the mobility behaviour of people living in neighbourhoods in the vicinity of stations, Apur analyses eight neighbourhoods where a public transport station opened between 2008 and 2018. The results show a significant drop in household car ownership.
In the eight selected neighbourhoods (Les Agnettes, Asnières – Gennevilliers Les Courtilles, Créteil – Pointe du Lac, Front Populaire, Mairie de Montrouge, Villejuif - Louis Aragon, Châtillon-Montrouge, Saint-Denis – Porte de Paris), there has been a sharp rise in the number of households with no car (+31%) and a significant drop in the number of households with several cars (-12%). Also fewer working residents use their car to go to work. Compared with the metropolitan trend of a decreasing use of cars, the results show greater reductions in the station neighbourhoods studied. With 0.61 cars per household in 2020, the drop in the average number of cars per household following improved public transport services is -13% in the station neighbourhoods in the study. In Grand Paris the decrease was -7% during the same period.
In 2020, 24% of the working population in the station neighbourhoods studied travelled to work in their car, representing a decrease of -19% after improved public transport services. The decrease was -8% in Grand Paris outside Paris proper during the same period. In the station neighbourhoods studied, the drop in car ownership after public transport improvements led to a decrease in the passenger car stock and the demand for residential parking (-1,700 cars) despite the rise in the number of households during that period (+12%).
These analyses confirm and measure the significant changes in households' behaviour in relation to cars following improvements in public transport. They also highlight the issues of integrating these changes better into the specific areas of station neighbourhoods, as well as into on-street and off-street local parking policies and of promoting an inter-municipal approach, as recommended by the Ile-de-France Mobility Plan. Once the Insee Population Census becomes available, this work could be extended and gone into in more depth with recently opened metro stations, in particular the 18 metro stations created between 2020 and 2024.