ReportingAt the Crest carpooling area, in Puy-de-Dôme, employees meet at dawn to share the journey to their place of work.
The moon is still high and the fields are bathed in darkness when the first headlights cast their pale light on the tariff panel of the Peigne service station, at the foot of the village of Crest, in Puy-de-Dôme. Thursday, January 27, along the highway that leads to Clermont-Ferrand, about fifteen kilometers further north, the liter of SP95-E10 gasoline is displayed at 1.773 euros, that of diesel at 1.723 euros. Behind these fluorescent prices, paved at the back of the service station for fifteen years, the Crest carpooling area has never been so useful to workers in the surrounding villages.
Yves Lestrade was not a great regular. Employee of a company whose name he will not give, he is rather one of those who have a wide and variable working hours, a good enough reason to use his personal vehicle, alone, all buried in the padded and overheated comfort of his Mégane . This Thursday morning, however, he is ready to abandon it in favor of a colleague’s vehicle. “We carpool per period only, we resumed this habit a few weeks ago in the face of the cost of fuel”, he murmurs, his throat seized by a serious hoarseness.
Living in Ludesse, south of Clermont-Ferrand, he works in Gerzat, about thirty kilometers further north. A half-hour journey through the heavy traffic of the A75 and then the traffic jams of the city center, twice a day, five times a week, which ends up being very expensive for him. “If I could carpool more regularly, I would save a third of my current fuel costs”, calculates Yves Lestrade.
“Filling up right now hurts”
It is also the cost of travel between her home and her place of work that prompted Fabienne Promaillon to use her car only to come and park it in this carpool parking lot. As soon as she took up her new duties as works supervisor on reintegration sites, in December 2021, she “looked for someone to carpool with, asking everyone their daily route to find a common crossing point”.
She finally modeled her day on that of her colleague Philippe, who picks her up every day, and to whom the young woman pays “a participation for gasoline”. Because the distance between his home and his business, in Riom, in the north of the department, is significant and “so it’s expensive”. “Filling up right now hurts”, she summarizes, one eye on the vehicle of its driver who has just stopped a few meters further. No real time to linger: the thermometer reads −7°C, the asphalt is covered in frost. Here is another of the reasons that justify carpooling, in the eyes of Fabienne Promaillon: “My personal car is not reliable enough to make such journeys [plus de 30 kilomètres séparent son domicile de son lieu de travail], I am more reassured to take it only over short distances. »
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