Our regular commutes before the COVID-19 pandemic: 400 km and more than 10 hours per week

This article was originally published in our "Décryptage Mobilité" newsletter. To receive future articles by email as soon as they are published, Subscribe now. By Rodrigo Baranna – Senior Consultant

While our travel has been significantly reduced since mid-March due to the lockdown, discussions are flourishing about what mobility might look like in the post-COVID-19 world. To properly guide this discussion, it is helpful to start with an initial assessment of our mobility patterns as they were before they were put on hold. To that end, the recent "2020 National Survey on Mobility and Lifestyles" ^[1] is noteworthy: the Forum Vies Mobiles, in partnership with the Observatoire société et consommation, recently published the results of this a study that analyzes regular trips, that is, trips taken at least once every 15 days. It is based on a survey conducted among a representative sample of the French population and covers travel within metropolitan France. Trips are classified and analyzed by purpose, such as work, education, essential activities, accompanying others, social activities, and sports and recreation. The “employment” category includes commutes between home and work and business travel (undertaken as part of one’s professional activities but outside the home-to-work commute).

Key findings: a previous underestimation of the overall extent of regular travel

The results show significant changes in mobility in France compared to the last National Survey on Transportation and Travel (ENTD), which was conducted in 2008 ^[2]. The National Survey on Mobility and Lifestyles reveals that Every week, the French travel an average of 400 kilometers and spend more than 10 hours commuting.. These figures differ significantly from the results of the 2008 ENTD, according to which the average French person spends 5 hours and 52 minutes and travels 167 kilometers per week on regular trips.

Have the French more than doubled their travel over the past 10 years?

The answer to this question is a bit more complicated than simply comparing the figures from the two surveys. The survey conducted by the Forum Vies Mobiles, which aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of mobility in France, covers a broader scope than the ENTD. Three significant differences have been identified:

• The analysis covers two weeks of travel, which makes it possible to better capture regular but not weekly trips, such as biweekly trips;
• The survey does not exclude regular long-distance travel, unlike the ENTD, which is limited to trips of less than 80 km;
• The survey also covers all types of business travel, including travel undertaken as part of one’s job, as well as travel by people whose work is mobile by nature (e.g., drivers, delivery personnel, couriers, etc.).

Work-related travel accounts for 43% of the distances traveled regularly in France

For working French people, work-related travel averages about 337 kilometers per week, consisting of approximately:

• 140 km per week of commuting;
• 130 km per week of travel related to work that is mobile in nature;
• 30 km per week of daily business travel;
• 37 km per week of occasional business travel (from less than three times a week to once every 15 days).

Inequalities Reflected in the Migration Patterns of the French

The study also reveals that The wealthiest have access to significantly higher average speeds than less affluent people when commuting to work : 64 km/h versus 40 km/h. This increase in speed is not intended to reduce travel time, but to increase the distances traveled. French people with an income of more than 2,500€ travel about 450 km per week for work-related purposes, while those earning less than 1,000€ travel only about 250 km per week.

Cycling: Untapped Potential

In its study, the Forum Vies Mobiles defines the concept of 9-km threshold for the range of possible bike trips. Thus, for distances of less than 9 km—or about a 30-minute ride—cycling would be accessible to a large portion of the population. While cycling would seem to be a realistic option for French people who live less than 9 km from their workplaces, 21% of French people in this situation still rely exclusively on cars for their commutes. More generally, 29% of French people lead a local lifestyle and carry out all their regular activities—excluding social activities, however—within a 9-kilometer radius of their homes. Cycling could therefore become their primary mode of transportation.

Remote Work: Counterintuitive Results

The most surprising finding of the study concerns the practice of telework. Intuitively, working remotely would reduce the amount of travel a person makes, but the results show that longer average distances are observed among those who work remotely. The study reveals that working from home on a regular basis (at least twice a week) is associated with travel distances that are 30% greater than those of employees who never work from home. This is even more true for those who work remotely occasionally (less than twice a week), for whom average distances are about 60% higher. This could be a sign of a rebound effect: as the frequency of trips to work decreases, people are more likely to accept longer distances for this type of trip. In addition, these people also have more time to make other types of trips. Nevertheless, a causal relationship between teleworking and longer distances has not been established. Is it remote work that contributes to longer commutes, or are people who live farther from their workplaces more likely to adopt remote work?

The new version of the ENTD will be available soon

While expanding the scope of the National Survey on Mobility and Lifestyles allows us to observe new mobility trends, the new version of the ENTD will enable us to track changes within the same scope. This will allow us to distinguish between the various explanatory factors and conduct a more robust analysis. The results of the 2018–2019 National Survey on Transportation and Travel are expected to be published soon, in the first half of 2020.

^[1]Mobile Life Forum^[2]2008 National Survey on Transportation and Travel