Derrière les promesses de liberté, la voiture est une prison ? Tom Dubois

One-third of the costs are borne by the users. So it's roughly 200 billion that is supported by the users. So whether it's households or businesses, it's a huge cost. Today, we will expose the true cost of the car-centric system, whether in social, economic, health and environmental terms. Behind the promises of freedom, we have all become prisoners of the car by giving ever more space to car use and locking our journeys with the least efficient and most polluting mode of mobility of all. It is a quote from the Italian journalist Andrea Cocha who put it in his own style by saying it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the car because we are so embedded in a car system in a system where we need its capacity in terms of speed, in terms of range and so on that it seems impossible, insurmountable today to do without it. Have we really decided that? And is that really what people want? What if there was a viable alternative that allowed all French people everywhere in France to move around freely without a car while reducing land use, accidents and economic and ecological costs. To get out of the car system, we rely on what Johnery said, and he quoted Buckminster Fuller where he said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, you have to build a new model that makes the old one obsolete." And so that's really what we did, saying we need to create a new model that will make the car system obsolete. And so we came up with an alternative mobility system. You are listening to the Circul Metabolism podcast, the podcast to better understand the metabolism of our societies and their socio-ecological impacts. To discuss these topics, I am pleased to welcome Tom Dubois. Tom is responsible for promoting research at the Vimobile forum, which is a French think tank specializing in mobility. And last year, they published a report entitled "Alternative Mobility System". Car- free zones throughout the country. In this episode, we will explore the true social, economic, and environmental cost of the car system. Discuss whether an alternative system exists that could address all these points and how to implement it. This video was made in partnership with the YouTube channel UMX, for which I also created a mini immersive documentary with Tom du Bois. We strolled on foot and by bike through the magnificent town of Acy to discover this short documentary with exclusive questions and now it's time for the interview. Hello Tom. Good morning. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for coming all the way here . I wanted us to get straight to the point, so I'm inviting you to participate in this study on the alternative mobility system. But to get to this point, there were some weak signals or not very weak, very strong signals that led you to say we need to put in place something alternative. What were the major signs or two major signs that raised your suspicions? We need to develop something completely different. Let's say that we launched two studies that were really the beginnings of the alternative system. The first was a study on the cost of the car system. How much does the car system currently cost, and the second one, which is truly free to travel by car? So a study on what we have called the excluded from the car system, that is to say all the people who are not really free to use the car, to drive a car to get around. It's true that when you look at both, there are some figures that are quite striking, quite significant, and that we often forget. Finally, we get the impression once again that the car represents freedom, promises, time savings, door-to-door service, and we forget all the sacrifices, all the human sacrifices, the economic sacrifices, the ecological sacrifices that are associated with it. I wanted us to start with this quantification of the total cost of the car system in France. Okay, I'm not going to reveal the figure directly, but maybe you've left, there was the CGDD, so what is it? On sustainable development, the Commissioner General. Yeah. the general commission for sustainable development which had already calculated in 2019, if I remember correctly, how much the car system costs. We were around 190 billion euros in 2015, sorry. You made an update in 2023 on the same scope and we see that there has been an increase so you estimated for the same scope an expenditure of 230 billion euros so 19 20% increase while inflation is a little less than that. So we see that no matter what we do, it increases, it increases, it increases. What were the major factors that explained these approximately 200 billion euros at that time and today? So in fact, what the CGDD did was a calculation based on the figures from 2015. They did it in 2019, but the 2015 figures were the most recent. We asked ourselves, what are the most recent figures? Those were the 2023 figures. So we asked Florent Laroche, who is a researcher at Laet, the transport economics laboratory in Lyon, to update these figures and then to look at whether we update these figures but by looking at all the components of the car system, which was not the case for the CGDD at the time. So the first step was to ask ourselves, "OK, how have these figures changed between 2015 and 2019?" And so indeed, we see that it has followed inflation a little bit, but there are things that have increased more. For example, insurances are very expensive, the cost of the vehicles themselves has increased, and so there are a number of factors that have caused prices to rise above inflation. This shows that this system is already extremely expensive when we stay within the scope of the CGDD. There are a couple of points that were already in there. So indeed, there were expenses for roads for example, there were purchase costs, there was maintenance and insurance, there were fuels, there was public parking, there were externalities, there you go, which can be ecological or societal. That alone gives us an idea of ​​the scale. I think the biggest expense was still the purchase cost. There were also the fuels . Those are the two big positions which are more than half, in quotes, of the... Yeah. Overall, what ultimately costs the most significant expense is always that which rests on the users, households or businesses. And so it is indeed purchase, insurance, fuel, uh all these things which, well, ultimately spread out in our daily lives, seem necessary, seem a little insurmountable and then become a little blurry in a certain way. We don't really know how much we spend on our cars each year. So we know that the figure is between 4 and 6000 € of expenses per vehicle, but we spread it over 12 months and so in the end at least 400 € of expenses per month, but we do not think about it in an integrated way. And then there are all the other expenses which are the classic expenses which are on infrastructure which will be provided either by the State or by local authorities to maintain the roads, to ensure safety and so on. But in reality, when we stay within that perimeter, we are on a, let's say, restricted perimeter which defines something that does not correspond at all to the reality of a car system. The car system is much broader; it includes a huge number of things. We tried to go further. Let's just say that we may not have gone far enough yet. Some economists tell us, "But you 've forgotten a lot of things in your calculations. Let's just say we tried to go as far as possible while remaining extremely rigorous and conservative in our assumptions. The idea was to have a calculation that wouldn't be open to challenge , so we could n't be accused of inflating the figures. And so, we added a number of things. For example, the issue of parking. Parking is space on the street, space in private and public parking lots that we use exclusively, that we dedicate to cars. Home parking is also an extremely important space that we pay for when we buy or rent a property, and so on. And so, a lot of things like that that we don't necessarily take into account, for example, the cost of a driver's license. A significant cost for households that we do n't consider when we look at the car system. Whereas in reality, all of this..." It's all part of the same system: how do we make the car system work? And we even wanted to add externalities to that, a number of mostly negative externalities. For example, the issue of noise pollution, the issue of fine particulate pollution, the issue of CO2 emissions, obviously, the very important issue of accidents, which represents injuries, deaths, and then everything in terms of collective organization to manage that. When we add all that up, we realize that this figure, updated in 2019, is actually much more than we imagined. We go from roughly 200 billion to 305 billion in costs to the community, the overall cost we pay each year. Yes. Yes. 300 billion, we're already struggling with that . That's an enormous figure. You noted that it was about one-tenth of France's GDP. So when the The president said, "We love cars, they represent 10% of the total cost of the entire state—well, of state production, sorry, not the costs, but in any case, how much of the state's domestic production is, in one way or another, used to keep this car system running? When we compare it to GDP, the idea is to try to keep some proportions in mind because these figures are so enormous that it's difficult to grasp what 10% of GDP means, and even then it can be a bit vague, but we realize it's a lot, and so that was really the objective: to say, ' Well, what is 10% of GDP?' I don't know, it's roughly the national education budget, for example, things like that. And so that was really the objective of this comparison. After that, there are a lot of things in it that aren't really GDP-related, you know. So it's really..." To have a reference point, you added some rather interesting points, such as congestion, parking, and so on. We can add more figures later. What I also found quite interesting was when you tried to quantify it per person, which came to around €8,000 per vehicle each year. And as you said earlier , who ultimately bears this cost? It seems enormous, but in the end, who pays for what? Two-thirds of the costs are borne by the users. So, roughly €200 billion is borne by the users, whether households or businesses. These are the people who buy the cars, the people who insure the cars, the people who put fuel in their cars, the people who pay for car repairs, and so on. So, these are the third parties. It's a huge cost. If we did without it, it would mean enormous savings for households and businesses. So, for us, it already seems worthwhile to look at it that way. Then there are the costs for local authorities or the state, which are responsible for maintaining the roads, ensuring road safety, and ensuring the proper functioning of the system. And so, we're talking about around 26 billion, and everything else is negative externalities. So, as I was saying earlier, it's the issue of pollution, local pollution, noise pollution, for example. As I mentioned earlier, we were conservative in our assumptions. Regarding noise pollution, I don't have the exact figure in mind, but it's a few billion per year. ADEM (the French Agency for Ecological Transition) had estimated it at several tens of billion per year. So, we wanted to stick to figures that are indisputable, but Certainly, it's largely underestimated. And that's something we need to keep in mind. So, this makes us want to redo this calculation, trying to include more things and be as precise as possible. And why are we doing this? It's not just for the sake of having a very large number. It's because we're following what the economist Joseph Stiglitz said: we need to quantify the overall cost of things to society in order to make informed decisions. If we look at things piecemeal, we're not aware of what it costs us collectively and the collective impact of our policies. If we want to make good decisions for future policies, we need to know the externalities of a system. If we only look at what it costs communities, saying, "Well, there are budgetary issues, we're very concerned about the budget right now," we're not getting anywhere. Okay, so we're going to do some equations that will allow you to sort things out. If we only look at what it costs individuals, well, as I was saying earlier , we realize that it is smoothed out per month and so on. This may be more or less acceptable in times of crisis or not. But in fact, when you add all that up, all of a sudden, you realize that it's an economic burden that is gigantic and perhaps not so acceptable after all. So, we need to keep that in mind when we look at alternative policies and say to ourselves, well, this alternative policy may be very expensive, but in fact it may be much cheaper than the system as it currently operates. And so that's really what guided our thinking. We need to know the overall cost of the car system before imagining an alternative system in order to be able to compare them. In that, you mentioned approximately €8000 to €8500 per vehicle each year. We can imagine, uh, in a rural area, in a peri-urban area, two cars per household. In the end, it all adds up very quickly. And when we compare this, it's a bit of a sleep game, a household is going to have a budget. They're not going to have a budget that doesn't increase just because they're buying another car. On the contrary, so when we ask ourselves, is it the end of the month versus the end of the world? So there you have it, there are also equations that we can use with the same budget. One could very well buy an RR heat pump rather than an electric vehicle, or well , there are some kinds of sleep games that a household is obliged to play. And if we say that there is €8,000 or €15,000 more available each year, well, I think that would open up a lot of possibilities for many things that are societal or ecological. Yeah. In fact, what's really interesting is that when you look at this figure and you ask yourself, well, if we manage to do without it or reduce it, what will we be able to do with it? Economist Florent Laroche, who worked on the study, has a rather worried view of things. He will say, well, there is a hidden cost of sobriety, that is to say, money that will be freed up and that could be spent on things that are useless or even polluting themselves. I think it's more of a Gevens paradox. Exactly. And I, on the other hand, am thinking that we are going to free up economic resources in order to have expenditures that may be more ecological but more expensive today. For example, eating more locally sourced food. Imagine, we no longer have our car, we can no longer go to the supermarket. Supermarket which allows us to have access to food which is generally a little cheaper than, uh, when we shop at local stores. Well, in fact, we're going to have an equation here which means that we'll free up purchasing power to be able to go more to local shops, maybe buy organic food, locally produced and so on, which is indeed a little more expensive. So in fact, we are freeing up room for maneuver in many other areas of life that are connected to mobility issues and that will allow us, ideally, to live better. We forget that we are embedded in a system and that really makes the connection with the question of metabolism, the car system as it works and all the impacts it has on the different areas of our lives, going to work, shopping, what we buy when we shop, our leisure activities and so on, we forget that all this is not the result of a clear democratic choice. It is a succession of policies that have been implemented, and on which citizens have not always been asked for their opinion. And so it's something that has gradually taken shape with a huge number of components and a very significant overall economic stake. And so the car system is, uh, infrastructure, so, uh, roads, motorway interchanges, well, a lot of things. It's an industry and it will push to keep the car system running. So it's the oil industry, it's the automotive industry, it's also potentially the retail industry. These are practices. That is to say, we know that these are things that are deeply rooted in our lives. We have gotten into the habit of consuming in such a way, we have chosen a job which is located at such a distance from our home and so we become dependent on the car system, we create a dependence on the car system and there you have it. And it is also a land-use planning which uh creates precisely this dependence, that is to say that land-use planning has been designed according to the speed potential and the fluidity potential of the car system. And today, it's becoming very difficult to do without it. But when we look at it, when I come back to the question of costs, well, we realize that it poses a problem and that it is interesting to consider an alternative. Obviously, when you talk about systems, it brings back a lot of memories in my head. Obviously, I come back to, for example, Aurélien Bigot who talks about Zavi's conjecture with 1 hour of travel per day and finally it's 1 hour in total I think so 30 and 30 minutes which has existed for more than a century. So we tell ourselves that we have a quota of travel time anyway, but nothing tells us how many kilometers, nothing tells us how we are going to spend it, and so on and so forth . Well, that's what's very interesting, when we look at the history of mobility, of the evolution of modes of transport, we realize that in the 20th century, we had access to modes of transport that allowed us to go faster and faster, and it didn't save us time, it allowed us to go further and further. And that's really a paradox, we still struggle to understand it. That is to say, when we build a new highway, we will tend not to allow people who previously made the journey to travel faster on that journey. That will be the case initially. But in the end, what will happen is that we will participate in a dispersion of activities across the territory and we will always go further because we are trying to optimize the cost of distance and time as much as possible. That's exactly it. Finally, there is just, I think he was saying that it is around 50 km now the journeys rather than a few kilometers which was the walk previously in this half hour or hour. Well, it's clear that when Aurélien shows the evolution of distances travelled in the 20th century according to modes of transport, when a mode faster than the others develops, we see that we always go further. And so it has very impressive curves where we see the explosion of distances travelled daily, which means that today it is very difficult to imagine an alternative to these rapid mobilities and essentially the car, which represents 70 to 80% of the kilometers travelled. Today, we have become dependent on cars because we are dependent on speed. That is to say, our job is so far from home and, uh, in fact, we do n't have an alternative at the moment. So we have to take our car. It's not that we particularly enjoy it, it's just the way it is when the place where we shop has been set up in such a way that we need our car to go shopping every week. Indeed, many aspects of our lives are organized around this potential for speed. You mentioned the different components of the system that make up the car system and it makes me think a lot of the conversation I had with Nello Magalich who also talked about the second infrastructure which is not the physical hardware infrastructure but everything around it to put it in place. So for example, lobbies, for example research institutes, which also facilitated this, can be technological or political promises and so on and so forth. So there is not only the hard, but there is also the soft which makes this car system launch it to us as if there were desires, as if it were something desirable in the end, it is as if we cannot, well , there is this kind of in our head, you had this quote perhaps in relation to the end of the world and the end of the car, I don't know if you want to share it. Yeah, it's a quote from the Italian journalist Andrea Cocha who took this story, well, this quote about capitalism, and put it in his own style, saying it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the car because we are so embedded in a car system, in a system where we need its capacity in terms of speed, in terms of range and so on, that it seems impossible, insurmountable today to do without it. Well, in reality, all of this, we still have to keep in mind that it is indeed a socio-economic construct that is difficult to question, but it is still interesting to question it by asking ourselves, did we really decide this? And is that really what people want? And what I find interesting is that there is a number of studies that show that in the 60s and 70s and even before, for example in the United States, there were very significant protests when the car arrived. There have been large demonstrations to say no, we do n't want this car system that is being installed in our streets. So it is Peter Norton who shows this very well regarding protest movements in the United States. We know that there were protest movements in Paris in the 70s too. Uh and we also know that in the Netherlands, if today there is a cycling system that is uh which serves as a model for uh most European countries that are trying to develop cycling policies, it is because at the time of the oil crises in particular, there were uh significant demonstrations, particularly related to the safety of children. There were accidents involving children on their way to school being hit by cars, and so there was a very significant movement of parents who said, "No, we don't want this car system, it's dangerous. We want something else," and it had an effect. It's pretty much the only country where it really had an effect, since in the United States or France, the car system is still developing. And so what this shows is that ultimately it's not a given. We fought against it, and not everyone was in favor of this car system. And so, at the forum, we always try to think about mobility policies that address both environmental challenges and people's aspirations. And so, we have a whole system of studies, of aspirations, which we call the Citizens' Forum. And the idea is to have a participatory democracy mechanism that brings together 120 citizens across four territories to allow them to debate their aspirations for the future. How Would they like to be able to live and move around the region in the future? We've brought them together for now. Once on the topic of work-related mobility and once on the topics of mobility related to leisure and free time. What we see, what we observe, is that the car is not at all central to their aspirations; it never comes up. But there are much more concrete or broader things that do come up. For example, a very strong desire to slow down lifestyles, to be able to regain control over one's pace of life. And in fact, our pace of life is extremely defined by the car system, its speed, the distances to travel, and so on. A second very strong desire is to be able to live closer to home on a daily basis, and therefore to live more locally. That is to say, they are closer to work, closer to shopping, closer to leisure time, and have the right to a rich local social life. So these are extremely strong aspirations. And what we... What we also have is, uh, an aspiration for this. It might seem a bit trivial put like that, but it's completely central to the question of an alternative system: being sure of being able to get home when you go somewhere . And so, when we consider this aspiration, the simplest thing is to imagine the car and say, "The car is mobility insurance, right?" A number of people define the car as mobility insurance. I go somewhere, and in any case, with my car, I'm sure to get back. But in reality, that doesn't mean people want a car. It means they want to be sure of being able to get home. And so, we can absolutely imagine providing this assurance with other means than the car system, while still meeting these aspirations. And that's why we say, "We must seriously address these aspirations to imagine the mobility system of the future." You've already mentioned one component of the alternative mobility system, which we'll look at in a moment. I just wanted to talk about a second aspect. which is also counterintuitive, or at least less well-known. What is unfair about this car system? Obviously, there's the cost, so not everyone can afford it, but there are also many people excluded from this car system. Who are they? And why? This is extremely important to us, and it's really what we put at the heart of our work when we imagined an alternative to the car. We didn't necessarily start with the environmental issue, which is important, but rather with the aspirations or inequalities that exist today. So, aspirations—I've already mentioned them—and we wanted to look at how the current system impacts different citizens. And so, we launched a study to try to find out who is truly free to travel by car, because very often when we talk about alternatives to cars, we get responses from people who... You wouldn't think so, it's impossible to do without a car, and they're absolutely right. That's our starting point. Today, in France as it's currently structured , in most areas—let's say outside the centers of a few major cities— it's clearly impossible to do without a car because the landscape has been developed around the car system. But we mustn't forget that just because cars account for 80% of trips each year doesn't mean they meet all needs. So, the idea behind this survey was to find out who the people are who don't benefit from the car system. We called them the " car-excluded." So, these are people who ultimately aren't independent with a car. And so, we launched a large survey of all French people. What it shows is that there's a segment of the population who can't drive, and therefore are excluded from the car system, and so, yes, exactly. We have Those who are simply too young, let's say everyone under 17. So, there's a segment that isn't independent anyway, that's clear, but there's a segment that could be independent using other modes of transport, or that could be independent but can't drive at all. Then there are the elderly. And this is an extremely important issue in France today, since we know we're experiencing a demographic trend of an aging population. This issue will increase and become more and more significant, particularly in rural areas, since that's where the percentage of the elderly population will be highest, and also where alternatives to cars are least available. And then there's also a whole segment of the population that simply doesn't have a driver's license or doesn't have a license that's valid in France. All of this together represents 33% of the population who simply can't drive because they do n't have access to the driver's license. A third, that's still something, you know . So it's somewhat obvious, but when you bring it up with the figures and so on, you realize that it's already a significant portion of the population that's excluded from the car system, at least in a way that prevents them from driving independently. But we also looked at it, we asked people who have their driver's license and therefore potentially have the ability to drive independently. Do you have times when you're prevented from driving, times when you give up on getting behind the wheel, and for what reason? And so what we found is that there are roughly—maybe you have the exact figure in mind, 49%, I think—of the population who say they are always or often prevented from driving. What does that mean? It means that these are people who, at least once a week or at least once a month, will give up getting behind the wheel for a number of reasons that we tried to list. to ask. So, it's huge. It's a segment of the population that we imagine to be free to travel by car, but in fact, it makes a huge sacrifice. So, what are these factors? This is the one that particularly interests me , the one I like to highlight every time, it's nighttime, for example. There's a segment of the population that can never drive at night. It's 7% of driving license holders who say they never drive at night. That's roughly 3 million French people. The problem is that nighttime happens every day because of stress, because of it, it could be worry, it could be a vision problem, it could be, well, a lot of things, but the problem is that nighttime happens every day, and sometimes, in winter right now, it happens very early, so from 5 pm to 8 am, we're no longer independent with our cars, even if we have a driver's license, we have a vehicle, and so on. So it's extremely important, and then There are other, more obvious factors, such as not being comfortable driving in the city or the countryside, and the cost issues. As we've seen, cars are very expensive. For many households, it's sometimes too costly; repairs are difficult, insurance is difficult, and simply putting fuel in the car is difficult. Many factors like these combine to mean that 39% of the population regularly have to give up driving. Then there are others, the rest of the population, who say they give up driving from time to time. These are less significant issues, but for example, we see that driving license suspensions are a recurring problem for nearly 10% of the population, and breakdowns are a recurring issue because of poorly maintained vehicles. And that means that, well, we're going to be prevented from using our vehicles at certain times . So, things like that accumulate, and overall, only 12% of French people answer, "Yes, [grunt] for me, freedom, uh, the car is freedom to go where I want and when I want." And so, for everyone else, ultimately, the car system is a path paved with sacrifices or the impossibility of carrying out their activities. It's still incredible to think that we have 300 billion euros a year that benefit not just 10% of French people, but at least 10% of French people are fully committed to it, and uh, 40% of French people feel excluded, or at least prevented from doing so. So, these figures also need to be put into perspective, considering how much it costs. More than 30% is covered by local authorities, by communities, and so on. So, there you have it. It's about setting the record straight regarding the inequality of these seemingly enormous expenses, and the fact that some people ultimately have no control over them. They participate in this system, even if they can't do anything about it. And what's even more terrible, what we could add, is that this car system, which is indeed financed extremely heavily by local authorities or by the users themselves, is therefore not accessible to everyone, as we've seen. This includes people who do n't have a driver's license or people who have to give it up for certain reasons. But also, this system itself creates exclusion for other modes of transport because the car system takes up a huge amount of space. It imposes its speed, it imposes its pace on other modes. And so, for example, those who want to cycle, those who want to walk, ultimately find themselves on a tiny portion of public space because it's dangerous to share it with vehicles, or simply can't get around . It's a number of elderly people who would like to be able to cycle but who, ultimately, for fear of encountering car traffic, will give up on their trips or will make fewer trips. It's children who could go to school on foot or by bike and who will ultimately be driven by their parents . It's a huge number of people like that who find themselves prevented from making their journeys even if they hadn't planned to do so by car. Again, this systemic issue resonates with me, and I think, well, well , seen objectively, from a slightly more distant perspective, it's as if there's only negative aspects to this car-centric system. Whereas on the other hand, we hear that, well, the car is entrenched, it's here to stay. We also often hear in debates, well, it's a city-dweller's thing to say that we don't need a car. Me, I live in the countryside, it's essential for me. Anyway, there There's a whole series of real, or at least constructed, buildings that highlight the car system. What's our response to that? That it's completely true because, well, let's just say that today, going car-free is something for urban hipsters, since it's only possible in a few major city centers. Because across the entire country, we've implemented a car system that is hegemonic, extremely efficient, and extremely exclusionary for other modes of transport. And so, it's true that today, when we try to imagine an alternative to the car, we tend to do so only where it seems most likely, and therefore in the center of a few major metropolitan areas. But stubbornly, that's what we saw with the issue of pipelines. It's not possible, it's not acceptable to imagine alternatives to the car only in the centers of metropolitan areas because of the pipelines. The people who would need an alternative system find themselves in Many other areas, and soon they will too, and they are also in rural areas, peri-urban areas, where today it's hard to imagine an alternative. What we can also say is that when the car system was developed, it was initially a revolution and a great freedom, and we shouldn't deny or hide that . It was fantastic. It was unprecedented access to the territory . It was the possibility of escaping one's social condition, of escaping one's family or one's neighborhood, of going further afield . It was the possibility of going far away and coming back. So this is the question of commuting, which Vincent Koffman theorized. And so this is freedom. The problem is that little by little, the car as freedom has transformed into the car as the norm. Then, as an injunction. That is to say, today the car system is so developed and so hegemonic that we no longer have the option of doing without it in many cases. And so that's the problem: we're locked into the car system today. There's something you mentioned, and when I see these issues, I reflect, I don't know if it's right or wrong, but based on a zero-sum game, meaning that the territory—well, it's a quantity of territorial data that we have for mobility infrastructure—well, everything that the car takes, isn't something others will take. The same goes for the 300 billion; everything that the car takes is what won't be available for building trams, for building buses, for creating alternatives. And so, that's what we tend to forget: that if today It's underfunded, it's underrepresented, it's because there's no space and because the budget is being siphoned off, sucked up by cars. Regarding the issue of budget finances, well, that's something we're definitely aware of today, it's pretty much our daily reality in the media, it's all about budget constraints, and so there are trade-offs to be made. We ca n't spend money on everything. So it's clear that everything we spend on the car system, we're not going to spend on an alternative system of public transport, cycling, walking, and so on, whether on an individual or collective level, that's for sure. In terms of space, we'd say that this is particularly true within cities. Space is very limited, and so it becomes a matter of managing a kind of scarcity, and so when we allow a car to pass, we're not necessarily going to to be able to move something else . We'll have to share, it'll seem optimal, we'll have congestion, everyone will be slowed down, and so on. Outside of cities, this is less true. Today, we still have space in France. We're a large country, we have a lot of space, and so it's possible to make extensive use of this space and even to use—and this has also been the basis of our thinking on the alternative system—reuse some of the infrastructure dedicated to cars to put something else on it, since we have a very large amount of it, and so it's an enormous potential for imagining an alternative. Okay, I'll open and close this parenthesis fairly quickly. Electric vehicle, or rather, electric car. Where does that fit into all of this? It fits into the seven errors we can list, which mean that, because once we've said all that, don't think we're unaware, that public policies are unaware, that elected officials are unaware that citizens are unaware. In fact, we are aware of some of this. Let's say the disadvantages, that's perhaps what we're least aware of in a way. The overall cost of the car system , we're not aware of it, but we were still aware that cars cost us a lot every month, that local authorities struggled to spend what was needed to maintain the infrastructure, and so on. And so, for decades now, we've been trying to implement alternative policies to cars to try to reduce their place, especially in cities, and try to change the share. What we're seeing is that it's not working. The share of car use remains roughly stable. So, 70 to 80 % of kilometers are traveled by car despite millions invested in alternatives. So why? We tried to make a list of seven errors that actually guide public action. The first is that we tend When thinking about the average, we say, "Well, the average user, the average French person, travels so many kilometers," and so on. So it's logical to think like that because we need data to think about, but in reality, in terms of mobility, the disparities are extremely significant, from 1 to 30 or from 1 to 60, depending on whether we're talking about the time spent traveling each day or the kilometers traveled each day, for the French person who travels less and the one who travels more. So, from 1 to 30, from 1 to 60, these are enormous disparities. We don't have the same practices at all . The problem is that if we think in terms of averages, we'll say, "Well, we'll put a tax on fuel. That will give an incentive to travel a little less," and so on. That should be effective. In reality, we'll realize that for the wealthy people who travel the most, well, ultimately it's a tax that We'll be able to absorb it because we have significant income and ultimately it won't really affect us. But for households that are poor and also travel a lot, since this exists especially for people who have to travel for their work, well, it's going to be totally unacceptable. And that brings us to the question of the yellow vests. So, thinking about policies based on the average leads us to a dead end. The second big mistake is to oppose the city and the countryside. We tend to say, "Well, in the city, we'll put in place public transport, bicycles and so on, and then in the countryside, we'll stick with the car because anyway, it's not possible to imagine an alternative and it will work well that way ." But in reality, uh, it does n't work if we want to reduce the space allocated to cars because nobody lives only in cities. Whether in the countryside or in the peri-urban area, in reality, our lives are a little bit straddling these territories, and so each of us will need to move from the city to the peri-urban area, from the peri-urban area to the rural area, or from the rural area to the city. So. And so, from the moment we imagine systems by territory for the city, a system for the peri-urban, a system for the rural, there will be breaks. And when there is a break, it will be because the car, its system, has been developed across all of these territories. Uh, the third mistake of mobility policies is to target journeys between the city center and the periphery. There is a tendency to believe that, since traffic flows are extremely concentrated on centre-periphery journeys, implementing express bus solutions, for example, between the centre and the periphery would be a way to solve mobility problems. In reality, it's true that there are flows, it's true that there are needs, but ultimately it's a small portion of all the needs. Half of the French population does not work. So, the journeys of homeowners working during rush hour ultimately do not concern them. Well, employment has largely moved out of city centers, so there is a huge amount of commuting from suburb to suburb, from center to suburb, and so on and so forth. So ultimately, it's a policy that is uh uh useful but largely insufficient, let's say. The fourth mistake is adding the modes together . We will tend to advocate for a cycling policy, a walking policy, a public transport policy, and so on and so forth. And in fact, when we do that, instead of thinking about the system, that is, the area of ​​relevance of the different modes and how all of that can add up to work together and form a system, we tend to put the modes in competition with each other and not necessarily with the car. And so, public transport will have its modal share taken by cycling and so on and so forth, even though it's not necessarily the most relevant option. So we need to stop pitting modes against each other and think about them together because the car system is really designed to be extremely fluid across all territories. 5th mistake: arguing that the French are attached to the car. People say the French aren't going to give up their cars, they love their cars. But actually, that's not true. The car is a... well, that's not true in all cases. There are people who love their car, but it is essentially an object that is very functional. That is to say, we tend to buy used cars, or even old cars. We try to keep them for a long time to make those journeys that we are forced to make by car in a car system and we are not all pampering a car that we paid an extremely high price for and that we find extremely beautiful and so on. The 6th mistake is saying that the car is freedom. We see that often. The car is synonymous with freedom. As we saw with the rejected, ultimately it is total freedom for only 12% of the French population. And for everything else, it's not freedom at all. It's even sometimes a constraint. And the last mistake, we're getting there, is the electric vehicle. We tend to think that electric cars will solve our mobility problems. So, that's partly true on the issue of CO2 emissions. The electric vehicle emits far less CO2 than the internal combustion engine car. So that's true, but it's not a systemic solution. And so, in the end, we will maintain our dependence on the car, we will maintain the dependence on the car system and we will not get out of it at all and we will put aside all the other problems, the rejections of the car, the cost of the car system, part of the pollution which is linked to the use of the car and which will remain. for example microplastics which are linked to brake wear, tire wear on the road and so on and so forth. Furthermore, it raises other issues that seem very important to me. For example, when we look at the global scale, we can say to ourselves, uh, in France, we are going to replace our fleet of 40 million internal combustion engine vehicles with 40 million electric vehicles. Let's say it's possible and we succeed, what do we do in the rest of the world? We consider that we are the only ones to have electric vehicles and in the rest of the world, either they are not equipped with cars, or they have thermal vehicles or should everyone have electric vehicles according to our model, that is to say 80% of households that are equipped with cars. If that's the case, we go from 1.5 billion vehicles on Earth to approximately 5 billion vehicles on Earth. And we know that we are not capable of building it, of supplying it with rare earth elements, materials and so on to uh manufacture all the vehicles. So, uh, there would be a form of hypocrisy in pretending that we have the right to access electric vehicles and that the rest of the planet does not. So OK, the electric vehicle, let's say it can solve some problems here and there . Obviously, it decarbonizes and we are somewhat in that urgent situation, but in any case, it does not solve the problem. uh the whole system, that's what we sometimes call end- of-pipe solutions. Uh, that solves the end of the pipe but not the beginning. So, you've given us a good idea of most of what's not working. We realize that it is possible to solve all of this with another system. So we have to abandon this system and move to another system. Can you give us a panoramic view of this top of the system? What would France, perhaps Europe, perhaps the rest of the world look like if we assumed the car existed ? So, we thought about it on the scale of France to begin with, but indeed the idea is also to imagine a system that is applicable in all territories on the planet. And so it's really also about the concern that the car system cannot, or at least it's not desirable for it to develop in all territories. So let's try to imagine, we have a form of responsibility. We know that mobility models circulate throughout the world. Let's imagine a model that could work elsewhere. So we said to ourselves, we shouldn't just change the engine of the cars, we need to change the system. And so we need to move away from the car system. And to move away from the car system, we're relying on what Johnery said, and he quoted Buckminster Fer, who said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, you have to build a new model that makes the old one obsolete." So that's really what we did: we had to create a new model that would make the car system obsolete. And so we imagined an alternative mobility system. The idea is to ask ourselves how we can do without cars in all areas, so that everyone can access it at any time, every day of the week. This is the mobility insurance we were talking about, meaning that when you go somewhere, you're sure you can get home at any time. You seem to have a lot of things on your bucket list. Everything we want is on there. But how do we actually achieve it ? So, we tried to imagine a The system. We worked at the departmental level, pragmatically speaking, thinking, well, it's an existing administrative level . It's not entirely inconsistent with the scale of the catchment area, the mobility area, since 80% of daily trips are made at least within the department. All of this is imperfect. But what we found interesting about the department was that it has a metric that was conceived before carbon-based and motorized mobility, with the famous day spent on horseback traveling to the prefecture. So we imagined the departments, we divided them so that you could reach the prefecture in a day, on horseback. So we thought, well, that's something interesting if we want to imagine an alternative system to the car system that exists today. And this also means that all the departments have areas that are roughly nearly equivalent. What will be interesting for us in our exercise is to imagine, in a number of typical departments, the development of an alternative system and then to look at the national scale at how much it would cost to implement it. So, it was practical for doing our calculations. And furthermore, when we add up all the departments in France, we have the entire territory. There are more white zones, and that's really an issue that was raised by the question . It's a question of how we eliminate white zones in terms of service to territories, of mobility options across the territories. And so, if we think at the departmental level, it all fits together like a puzzle, and we have the whole of France. So, that seemed interesting to us. So, that was the basis of our working area. And the idea was to imagine this alternative system and try to see if it works and how much it would cost. Would it cost to implement, and is there an environmental benefit to doing so? Those were our three main questions. We worked from a proposal by engineer Pierre Elvig, who had already envisioned what this system could look like. We collaborated with two consulting firms, BL Evolution and Visa, and provided them with seven departments that were representative of the diversity of departments in France. We created a typology with them and asked them to design the most ideal alternative mobility system possible for these seven departments. We want everyone to be able to get around without a car, and then we 'll look at the cost and the environmental impact. We did this by giving them the framework for the system: what it is, how it should work. So, we don't have cars anymore, or hardly any, but we have a three-pillar system: a highly developed public transportation system with a generalized, scheduled timetable. The public transport offer is available across all areas. So it applies to cities, suburbs, and rural areas alike. What exactly does "regular frequency" mean ? Regular frequency means that we are guaranteed to have a train either hourly or half-hourly, all day and all night. So, let's say, "Okay, I check the time, it's almost 11:30." I know there's no doubt. I know that they come every half hour anyway. If I miss one, I get the next, and so on. We developed this on the scale of the rail network, thinking we would reuse existing infrastructure as much as possible. On the rail network, we reuse as much of the rolling stock and track as possible, trying to increase the frequency on the TER lines, for example. And so, we envisioned half-hourly service on these lines, all day, and hourly service at night. It's still a revolution in terms of service offering, and we know we're capable of running more trains on our existing infrastructure. So, this idea of ​​reusing existing infrastructure as much as possible has also been applied to road transport. And so, we think, "But there are so many roads in France, we have roughly a million kilometers of roads in France, we're the European champions in terms of road kilometers per capita." We take a portion of it and give it to alternatives to cars. So, part of it is for public transport. And there we will put in place a system of scheduled buses and scheduled coaches which will serve all areas, including rural areas which will have a service every half hour during the day, every hour at night and then in the more densely populated areas, we will have a much more important service, especially at peak times and so on, which will allow people to travel entirely without a car. What is important is that we envisioned these networks as a spider web rather than a star-shaped network around major cities. The idea is a spider web on the scale of the departments. So throughout the department, we will have the possibility of making suburban, rural, and rural journeys without always having to go back through the central city, the metropolis, whether it is more or less large, to get somewhere. And so that was important. So this is the first pillar, it's a redesigned offer in terms of public transport and with a schedule. day, night and even weekends since we also travel on weekends even if it's not for work, we travel for leisure activities and so on . The second pillar is transport, specifically active modes of transport. So the idea is to have a cycling and walking network that is developed across the entire territory. So in the city, we'll say that we're going to push the logics that exist today. That is to say, we take a portion of the space allocated to the car and give it to the alternative mode. But we also pushed this logic into the peri-urban and rural areas by saying, well, we're going to take 20% of this road network and dedicate it directly to active transportation. This means that cars can no longer pass and 20% of the roads are dedicated to the active mode. So it's a revolution. But what is interesting is that it is a simple, quick, ecological way to create a network that is safe for getting around other than by car. And I want to emphasize the safety aspect, meaning that we won't encounter any cars on these lines or on these roads. And so, uh, we are sure that when we stop accompanying our child to school as we did by car until now, and we let them go by bike, well, they will have a safe route to their school. We are certain that he will not encounter a vehicle traveling at 50, 60, or 70 km/h. So when you are an elderly person and you want to go shopping, you are sure to be able to make your journey without getting stuck in traffic with vehicles that drive fast and that will worry you or even cause you problems in terms of walking or cycling. All of a sudden, we create an extremely dense network, uh, on the scale of cities but of course between cities in the peri-urban and rural areas. That's quite a revolution. The final pillar, without which this whole system does not work, is the importance of integrating information, integrating ticketing ethics, and integrating pricing. In fact, the idea is to say that the car system is extremely fluid, extremely integrated. That is to say, we have the highway code which is found throughout the entire territory. A sign in Paris, a sign in Normandy, it's the same. Uh, for example, with highway tolls, you can have a small device, you don't say, 'Hey , on this highway it works or it doesn't work,' it works pretty much everywhere. So, the car system is extremely simple. So we need to succeed in simplifying our alternative system too if we want to have a simple, pleasant, comfortable alternative way of getting around, etc. So we tried to calculate how much it would cost to implement this integration of biethics, information pricing, and so on and so forth . So all of this has been costed by the engineering firms. Clarification: buses and coaches are mostly found in rural areas. Buses are mostly in the city center. Yes, buses are more for everything that will be within metropolitan areas, in somewhat dense areas and so on. and the gap will be more on the outside, it will be in the urban area, let's say from one small town to another and so on, but these lines also go into the cities. What is important is that we have also considered an interconnection between the different networks so as not to have any interruptions in service, as they say. So that means I have to change modes too often. So it's all interconnected. But indeed, we thought that fashions had their area of ​​relevance . Obviously, when you mention all that, hm hm very quickly, we're going to say "But wait, who are all these buses, all these coaches, all these regional trains, all that stuff, well, by the way, there are jobs behind that." Finally, we need qualified people who can drive, who can maintain, and so on and so forth. Knowing that today, we are also in a bit of a bad way. uh there are so many towns and rural areas [grunt] that can't find qualified staff in that field. So there you have it , that's also, I imagine, a whole other aspect, it may not be included in your study, but I imagine it's something to consider. Well, yes, we figured that this system would simply require a lot of drivers, drivers, bus drivers, coach drivers, train drivers, and so on. And so, uh, if we do n't believe it, uh, it's impossible to implement this system. So we have estimated that we will need 120,000 bus, coach and other drivers by the time this system is implemented, in addition to what already exists today. So, as a result, it means we need to anticipate it in terms of training, in terms of recruitment, and we also need to have attractive working conditions, salaries, etc., and so we need to think about it and put it in place for the future. But it seems to us to be something that is quite acceptable insofar as today we already have many jobs that require working at night, for example, because our system operates at night, so we need night drivers. But if in order to have night drivers, well, you need to have favorable, acceptable salary conditions, therefore rest, a salary that either compensates for the inconvenience and so on and so forth. Another question that's been on my mind when you talk about all this is, do you mention concrete examples, like children going to school, or more macro examples at the departmental level, inter-town or inter-city connections, and so on? I'm wondering what level of granularity you're looking at all this? Is this on the scale of the entire department? Are you zooming in [grunt] inside each bourgeois to finally determine the level of detail in this alternative mobility system? What we asked the design office to do was to provide a cost estimate for the whole thing. So we asked them to calculate all the kilometers of paint, all the barriers that would need to be put in place, all the tarring or untarring that would need to be done, and so on. So, really, quite precisely. Obviously, they haven't made a plan that can be perfectly implemented tomorrow. So we asked them to zoom in on the major metropolitan areas each time. And so, they looked closely at all the streets. What would change in terms of allocation to cars, buses, public transport, bicycles, etc. What would that imply in terms of planning? I don't know, tearing up a sidewalk, rebuilding a sidewalk, putting on paint, all of that has been costed quite precisely. And then they were asked to go and look in the smaller towns that were around. uh, to have concrete examples and then we did some rule of three calculations on some, on some, uh, on some territories. Well, for everything related to kilometers of repurposed road and so on, we can get a fairly precise estimate. So, ultimately, we have very precise figures for the territories, and so this allows us to have an overall figure that is still quite reliable. When we were talking about fares, or rather ticketing, but for me it was fares that were on my mind, there was for a while a kind of trend or a kind of enthusiasm for a single fare, for example for rail in Germany, and we said to ourselves, should we put it in place in France? In the end, it all fell through . Could it be something like that ? That is to say, unique in France, you pay, I don't know , 100 bucks a month and then you can travel anywhere in France every day at any time. Is it rather up to each territory to decide? How ? Because you keep hammering the word "system" and I'm wondering when we talk about a system, is it a system on a national scale, or on a departmental scale? Is there something in between? How does all this work? As for pricing, we didn't go into the level of detail of saying it will be the same pricing everywhere, and I think that's not desirable in reality. In any case, territories must have the ability to adjust their pricing. However, what seemed important to us was to be able to access the purchase of a ticket or a subscription in a simple way and via, let's say, a single platform or a single operation. So that's what seems most important to us. So, what we've calculated is the equivalent of full-time hours, in a way, for people who will implement this system so that when you travel from the Normandy department to the Creuse department, you won't have to think, "Oh, but how do I buy a bus ticket?" The information will be simple, and the process will be the same. So, you'll be able to buy your ticket without even thinking about whether the ticket is the same price or not. Ultimately, we haven't positioned ourselves on that, and I don't think we intend to. A practical example: we live here, and I want to elaborate a bit. Basically, what is it ? It's a trip. I enter it on this platform, and it tells me how much it costs, and that's it. Or is it per hour ? Is it per trip? Is it per... For example, there are territories today where we're at the crossroads between different regions, between different metropolitan areas, and so on, and we end up with service names that are extremely confusing, so we get completely lost. Do I take a Bresgo? Do I take a Nomade? Or do I take... well, things that ultimately don't make sense to people. What they want is to take a train, take a bus, take a ride, quite simply, and to have the ability to easily access and purchase their ticket, without having to think, "Oh no, it's this platform where I'm going to buy my ticket, no, it's that other platform where I'm going to do it." So, we'll say that it's about simplifying access to purchasing tickets and information on how to access transportation as much as possible. In this study, you looked at seven departments: Creuse, Hautes-Alpes, Laïenne, Loirée, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Ille-et-Vilaine, and Gironde are three main categories. There's one category that included a metropolis , another that was entirely rural, and an intermediate category. Which area are you referring to with this mobility insurance? I mean, is it every half hour, or depending on population density, every quarter hour, every half hour, or every hour, also depending on the time of day? I live here. How many meters around me will I find something to get around? Is it a combination of these? For example, if I'm in a rural area, will I take my bike to get there? Is this for all areas? Are we required to have something to get around within a certain distance? What are the rules of the game? The rule we set for the consulting firm is that we must have at least [a certain number of] vehicles available. Across all territories, 80% of the population has access to a public transit stop within 2 km. That was the minimum. So in many areas, we're at 100%, 90%, 80%, but at a minimum, we 're at 80%, so that's important. So that's for accessing public transit. Then the active transportation network is much more comprehensive, and so we'll be able to combine the two in a way. We'll be able to travel by active transportation until we reach the public transit network safely. Again , it's always the same thing: we're safe on our bike or walking route to the public transit stop, without the risk of being hit by a car, without an unpleasant environment because of cars driving by, and so on. So that's how we've defined the interaction between these systems. And we said There are things missing, there are still things missing, since a portion of the population wo n't be able to travel those 2 km. So, since we conducted this initial study, we've added an on- demand transport service to our system. We've also costed this service, and it represents approximately 10% of the overall system cost. This is added each year to provide access to on-demand transport in all areas, allowing elderly people who can't walk or cycle to still connect to the public transport network or complete their entire journey. A number of vehicles are still available. For example, taxis are still part of our system. All vehicles used by people who need them for work are still authorized. This includes all utility vehicles, but also the car of a caregiver who visits people at their homes and makes rounds. From house to house, and who will need a vehicle to get around. So, all of this remains operational because ultimately we have so many roads in France today that we only cover a portion of them with our system, and therefore it's still possible to use these vehicles for work, particularly for people who work in trades, construction, and all that, it's the same. Exactly. They need a vehicle to transport either the equipment they need to work on-site or to travel from one worksite to another . And so, we retain the option of having vehicles. Then, something we haven't yet considered but which could certainly be imagined, is how do we manage these vehicle fleets? Does everyone have their own vehicle? Can we imagine shared fleets, for example, when someone doesn't need their own vehicle but occasionally has trips to make? Are these shared vehicle fleets? That's entirely possible. If we go back to the very beginning of our conversation to try and wrap things up gradually, we had two main questions about the car system. First, what is the cost ? Second, who are the drivers ? Let's say we manage to implement this alternative system, would it be more economical or would it cost more? And secondly, would we ultimately be fairer than the car system? That's the question we asked the consulting firm. We told them to design the ideal system and only then would we see how much it would cost. So for them, it was an original exercise, meaning that usually they have a constraint. For example, we have this budget, what can we do to design our cycling plan, to design our new public transport offering, and so on. So we approached it from the other direction, and they played along. And then we calculated the costs for each of our seven How much did it cost in each department? And then, thanks to the typology we developed, we were able to get a figure on a national scale. Nationally, it would cost society 60 billion per year in total to operate this alternative system. When we compare that to the 305 billion of the current car system, we realize that ultimately, completely eliminating cars across the entire country is much cheaper than the car system as it currently operates. So, for example, when we add on-demand transportation, we go up to 66 billion per year. We could add many things to make this system even more sophisticated, let's say, to take it even further, and so on. Nevertheless, in terms of scale, we still have quite a way to go before reaching the 305 billion cost of the car system. I didn't mention it earlier, but we only calculated the cost of the car system, that is to say... Um, the use of roads for cars and so on, but we've set aside everything related to trucks, light commercial vehicles, public transport, and so forth. So, to the cost of the car system, we have to add the cost of everything else involved , public transport and so on. And so, ultimately, we have a system cost that is extremely attractive. Regarding the issue of alternative routes, we've tried to push things as far as possible. So, as I was saying earlier, the ambition, more about alternative routes, is that everyone, in all areas and at all times, has access to this guaranteed mobility. So everyone must be able to get around . We asked the consulting firm to see if the system could accommodate all the traffic that is currently carried out by car. We might ask ourselves, well, will it be difficult to take all the motorists, who are very numerous, and put them on public transport, on bicycles, on a pedestrian network? And so on. If we only look at the shift from cars to public transport, not only can we absorb it—and it was designed for that, meaning we increased the frequency when necessary, and so on—but there's also room for all those who were previously excluded, who were forgoing certain trips, who were forgoing medical care , who were forgoing work, who were forgoing leisure activities, and who will now be able to travel and will therefore also be present in the network, in the system, and so we're sure that it works and that we can integrate it. So it's much cheaper and it allows the entire population across all areas to make the trips they want. Obviously, there are many other benefits to all of this. We're reducing our reliance on oil, we're becoming a bit more sustainable. Well, ecologically speaking, we haven't talked about it, but about 70% of greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced. thanks to this alternative system. So there are obviously plenty of reasons to go there. One question when we're dealing with metabolic issues is, uh, the flows, so the flows of motorists, energy, and so on, but also the stocks. What do we do with these 40 million cars? Do we scrap them? Do we give them away ? What happens then? Well, that actually comes down to asking the question of the transition from one system to another. And that's the complicated question. That's where it gets tricky. Initially, we thought we'd imagine the ideal system and see if we could finance it, if it would work, and answer Andrea Colchia's earlier quote: it's become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the car. Now, we're going to say, well, no, now we can imagine the end of the car, we know that there This scenario exists and we can finance it. Then, a question arises that we haven't yet answered: how do we get from point A to point B? And we know that the longer the transition, the more expensive it will ultimately be because, as Johnery said, the two systems will coexist, and at some point, we'll be financing both the car system and the alternative system. So we know it's better to try to imagine the fastest possible transition. The 40 million vehicles that exist today—well, we could imagine many things. We could imagine, for example, that we stop selling vehicles and let the existing fleet gradually deteriorate, keeping it as long as possible by refurbishing it and putting some of the vehicles into car-sharing programs, for example. We create fleets of vehicles like that, which can be rented from time to time for certain trips, and that little by little, the car fleet will be reduced to the bare minimum that will remain for... Workers, for on-demand transport, for taxis, and so on. For example, with incentives, we could say, for a household that decides to give up its car, we'll transform what already existed—it was the scrappage bonus or the vehicle exchange bonus , I don't remember exactly what it was called, which at one point was around €6,000, so I don't know if it still exists or not— but we could say, well, we'll give the equivalent in free transport for a certain number of years. We'll say, uh, it will be six years of free public transport if you give up your current vehicle, and a little more if you give up both, since 35% of households have two vehicles. And so, well, that would allow for a significant incentive-based transition. But what we're really putting on the table, and what's very important, is to say no constraints without alternatives. That's what happened during the Yellow Vest movement. We restricted current mobility without increasing it. The alternative offer. So when we consider the transition from one system to another, we need to be sure that when we restrict car use, the alternative will already be in place. Without that, we put people in a dead end because it's the car system, our lifestyles are organized around this system, and so we won't be able to get out of it . So no restriction without an alternative, and that's very important for thinking about the transition from point 1 to point B. I really like this idea of ​​transition, obviously, because, as you say, what's good is that the car stock, its lifespan, well, it's between 10 and 20 years, so, or between 5 and 20 years, let's say, depending on who owns the car. So it's a transition that can happen quite quickly, at least if we imagine all this. Last point, this transition from A to B. So we're in 2026, it There are the collectives, and then there are the 2027 municipal and presidential elections. So, this might be a key moment to propose this type of plan, this type of alternative system. We're a department, let's say Haute- Savoie. What do we do? Well, knock knock, Tom, I want to implement this locally. What do I do ? We're thinking about it, asking ourselves how we can help local authorities who want to go as far as possible, even to fully experiment with the system, since a number of them have come to us saying, "Well, we're interested, we'd like to try it." So it's not simple, given that we consider that state- level funding is necessary . A local authority alone won't be able to cover the cost of the alternative system within its territory. So what we're advocating is launching pilot programs for the alternative system that are supported... at the state level. Since we already have the right to experiment, we would be part of that right [grunt] and then we would unlock it, for example, we tried to include it in the finance bill, it didn't work, but we could imagine another type, another legislative framework, a budget that would allow us to test this system in 1, 2, 3 territories that are currently willing to do so. And so [grunt] we have some who have come to us who would like to be able to do it, and so we are trying to work on that. So it seems possible to us, it seems to us to be perhaps the best way to get from point A to point B, this way of imagining this transition, is to start with a few pilot territories. Perhaps the simplest would be to have territories that are actually cross-border or that are in one area, for example Finistère, that's not bad because it's not more difficult to imagine in Creuse, for example, because This is a territory heavily traversed by flows that, ultimately, aren't necessarily from one end of the Creuse to the other, but where it will be difficult to prevent cars from passing through. So, we think that, well , there are some areas that have started off on the right foot, some are ahead. Uh, in any case, it will require strong local political will and going beyond the traditional frameworks for organizing mobility. That is to say, it's the region, the department, and the local authorities that will have to agree and work together to implement this system, since today the roads are managed by either the local authorities, the municipalities, or the departments. Public transport will be managed either by the region or by the inter- municipal authorities that have assumed responsibility. And so, ultimately, we're in a system where responsibilities are extremely dispersed, and so we'll have to overcome that at the project and experimentation level. I often ask for a recommendation, whether it's to listen to, read, or watch—is it Do you have a film, for example, where there are no cars at all, or a book that gives us a glimpse of this completely car-free future? I mean, I was saying that you co-authored a book on ending the obsession with speed. Is there a book that particularly inspires you, that makes you think another world is possible, another world without cars is possible? A book that I found interesting, not entirely related to what I've just presented, but which nevertheless lays the groundwork, and especially the foundation for systemic thinking. "Paris for All" by Adrien Clent, which deals with many other subjects, but didn't miss the issue of mobility. He realized that it was indeed crucial in the organization of our lifestyles, in our rhythms of life, because today we live to the rhythm of the car, with the speed of the car, and so on. And he managed to develop quite a bit of this. He addressed this question of an alternative system—where it would be possible to travel more slowly, to travel differently, to live closer to home, and so on, across different types of territories—in a very intelligent way. I think he was particularly clever on this subject, and he conducted a systemic analysis, which seems absolutely essential for thinking about the future. So I highly recommend it. A big thank you, Tom. Thank you to you and to all of you for watching until the end. I'll see you very soon for the second episode, which we'll be doing with Tom, this time outdoors. We also mentioned the episode with Vincent Koffman, which I recommend you watch. Thank you. Thank you.