Congestion on the motorways that serve Lille at rush hour is getting worse in the heart of a region where the exceeding of alert thresholds for fine particles in the air is increasing. In the first quarter, they were as numerous as those recorded for the whole of 2021. Faced with these challenges, the European Metropolis of Lille (MEL) has long been interested in the experience of Rotterdam, where around 5,000 journeys per day would be avoided thanks to an eco-bonus activated in successive periods on targeted axes. Elected officials went to see on the spot and came back convinced that the idea of remunerating motorists so that they leave their car in the garage at rush hour was replicable in Lille.
On December 17, the MEL therefore voted to set up an eco-bonus which will initially apply to the two most congested motorway axes: the A1 (Paris-Lille) and the A23 (Valenciennes- Lille), which have become a daily hell to enter the city in the morning and leave at the end of the day. “Changing your habits pays off! », sums up the MEL, which primarily targets those whom Damien Castelain, its president (without label, SE), calls “self-soloists”.
To receive an eco-bonus of 2 euros per trip not made between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. and between 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., you will have to volunteer and register on an application on which to declare the trips not made plate reading system is provided to ensure this). The idea is to encourage motorists to favor another means of transport, such as the train or the bus, to carpool, to telecommute or to shift their schedules. Sébastien Leprêtre, vice-president in charge of transport at the MEL, believes that“with a 6% drop in traffic on these routes [l’]goal will be achieved”. The ecobonus will be capped at a maximum of 80 euros per month (transferred to the beneficiaries to their bank account via the application).
No unanimity
The MEL, which plans to begin the first wave of the deployment of the device in the spring of 2023, with the registration of voluntary motorists, gives itself nine months from the commissioning in September to evaluate its effectiveness. If this is conclusive, it is planned to extend it to other very busy motorway axes: the A22, which comes from Belgium, and the A25 (Lille-Dunkirk).
The ecobonus was passed without difficulty, but it was not unanimous. Rudy Elegeest, the mayor (SE) of Mons-en-Barœul, who chairs the actions and projects group for the metropolis, wonders: “Who throws themselves into the hell of the saturated A1 every day if they can do otherwise? If motorists do so, it is due to the lack of alternatives to the car on which we must concentrate our resources. » An opinion shared by Pauline Segard, leader of ecologists at the MEL, for whom this ecobonus “it’s a lot of public money for a very uncertain result”.
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