Is car traffic close to saturation in France?

Richard Grimal ()
Additional contact information
Richard Grimal: Cerema Equipe-projet ESPRIM - Centre d'Etudes et d'Expertise sur les Risques, l'Environnement, la Mobilité et l'Aménagement - Equipe-projet ESPRIM - Cerema - Centre d'Etudes et d'Expertise sur les Risques, l'Environnement, la Mobilité et l'Aménagement, MATRiS - Mobilité, Aménagement, Transports, Risques et Société - Cerema - Centre d'Etudes et d'Expertise sur les Risques, l'Environnement, la Mobilité et l'Aménagement - CY - CY Cergy Paris Université

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: After decades of uninterrupted growth, car traffic temporarily levelled off during the 2000′s in France, before coming back to growth after 2008. However, there are reasons to believe that car traffic growth is potentially limited, among which completion of the diffusion process for car ownership, limited travel time budgets, decreasing returns of additional car travel. In this study, we implement a disaggregate model at the household level to project future car ownership and car mileage per household in France, along with total car traffic, accounting for demographic growth. Our model relies on a sequential approach using panel data, with an ordered response probit model for the number of vehicles, including saturation thresholds by vehicle rank, and a log-linear model for car mileage, conditional on the number of vehicles, both with correlated random effects. A time trend is also incorporated to account for the decreasing household car mileage that was noticed over the last twenty years, which is not entirely explained by decreasing household size and the gradual decline of income growth. Assuming this trend to go on, total car traffic in France would grow only a little by 2050, despite demographic growth, and start decreasing from 2040. We discuss these results by questioning the structural nature of this trend.

Keywords: Car ownership; Traffic growth; Potential demand; Saturation; Time trend (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2023, 178, pp.103873. ⟨10.1016/j.tra.2023.103873⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04268472

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2023.103873

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().