Overview
Composed of 115 municipalities and more than one million inhabitants, the metropolitan area of Toulouse is a territory with a strong demographic and economic growth. In the large urban centre, the amount of daily journeys, all modes combined, will be of 4,5 million by 2025 that is to say 500 000 more than today.
The chosen territory for the deployment of the COMMUTE project is integrated into a wider perimeter, the north-western mobility area. This area is highly attractive due to the presence of the aeronautical and airport area, major economic territory of the Toulouse conurbation comprising more than 71 000 jobs and possesses an international flagship facility: Toulouse-Blagnac airport (sixth busiest French airport).
The aeronautical and airport economic activity area, like the other job hubs, now suffers from poor accessibility due to the congestion of the transport networks. This results in delays (24 hours lost/car driver/year in traffic jams in Toulouse's conurbation in 2016), losses in activity, stress and an increase in noise and pollution due to the massive use of private cars. Given the high modal share regarding private cars in the north-western zone (73 % following a 2013 household mobility survey), the main stake of the project is to provide alternative sustainable mobility solutions to the employees of the aeronautical and airport area regarding commuting journeys in the context of a sustained demographic and economic growth.
The aim of COMMUTE project was to maximise the efficiency of traffic flow and to reduce the environmental impact of traffic within the industrial area around the airport where aeronautical industries – partners of COMMUTE – are concentrated.
The project required developing coordinated combined actions:
• a new urban mobility collaborative management system that aimed at providing suggestions and recommendations but also set up an innovative way to co-create and cooperate between the members of the management system (that will bring together the delivery partners and the stakeholders) but also ensured a shared implementation.
• A digital platform dedicated to urban mobility measuring the impacts of the implemented experimentations and that would also be a decision-making tool for the mobility players on the basis of real-time data.
• Innovative actions contributing to the reduction of traffic through the deployment of new ways of working (telecommuting, modular timetable, etc...), mobility services (car sharing, ride sharing for small distances, etc), new infrastructure (autonomous shuttles).
• Coordinated and contractualised implementation by each stakeholder during the experimentations that demonstrated that it is possible to reduce bottlenecks without significantly changing the infrastructure.
In order to accompany the setting up of these solutions, the project aimed to assist companies in targeting and encouraging their employees who complete single driver journeys and who wish to opt for alternatives to car use through a system of rewards, to be defined with the organisation of awareness-rising events on urban mobility.
Funding
Results
The main results from the project were:
- 5,000 new jobs created in the airport and aeronautic area,
- employees getting to work in their individual car decreased from 70% to 65%,
- employees using car-sharing to get to work had increased from 7% to 12%,
- employees using public transport to get to work had increased from 8% to 12%.