The French, especially since the pandemic, are turning more and more to the bicycle, since one in two French people now say they are ready to make their daily journeys by bicycle, if there is good infrastructure. We talk about it with Jean Viard, sociologist, director of research at the CNRS.
franceinfo: Is the bicycle really a transport of our time, everywhere and for everyone?
John Viard: I believe that it is a transport of our time in the city, and that little by little, the cities will adapt to it. Afterwards, there are about a third of people who are less than five kilometers from their place of work and therefore, of course, they can go by bicycle for five kilometres. But you have a cultural difference because among the workers, in Montpellier, in Toulouse for example, there are differences, the workers, it’s 100% going by bike. And the executives, it’s 11%.
This means that the bicycle has a social group dimension, including because the workers, they still went by bicycle not so long ago because they didn’t have a car. The bicycle was the home/work item for those who couldn’t afford a car. Little by little, of course, everyone has cars. But basically, the city is being taken over by electric transport networks and bicycles. There is a real transformation of the urban phenomenon.
Afterwards, it’s problems of equipment, of course, of means of circulation, of feeling of security. That also comes into play when there are really beautiful cycle paths, we can see in cities that are equipped like that, that there are more ladies who ride bicycles. There are cities that lend themselves less well. Look at Marseille, it’s all on a slope and what’s more it’s a port city, the streets are always overloaded and they were built narrow. So suddenly, it’s difficult to put on bikes and make cycle paths. And then there are town halls which have not yet understood that cycling is one of the means of reducing pollution in the city, which is one of the major problems. France is poorly placed for air quality.
How has the pandemic changed the game for city dwellers? We have the impression that there was still a before and an after?
First, there are quite a few people who have left the city, and the dream of leaving the city has increased enormously. People want nature, they want space, they want heritage. Suddenly, they realized that they were locked up at home and they said to themselves: but what are we doing here? And there are some who said to themselves what are we good, and others who said to themselves that it is not going at all. You always have to tell yourself that 70% of French people live in a house with a garden, in a place that is suddenly far from their work.
And it is this huge peri-urban area that is still the heart of French housing. So it obviously plays in relation to the bike. But at the same time, there is also pleasure cycling. Look at the Tour de France, it’s still the major annual event that symbolizes the nation. There is really a parade of national identity with the work of helicopters visiting all regions. It’s magnificent as an event, as a relationship to work, to will, and to beauty. It’s all in the bike.
And then the electric bike really starts to change the situation because we are always pedaling. But the effort is continuous. Him, little by little, will take the place with one thing, the big problem of the bicycle and especially of the electric one, it is where I park it? And if you want, if you live in high-rise buildings where often there was a room planned for a sorting center when we built these buildings and then afterwards, we made it a parking lot for strollers.
I was elected local in Marseille. It was complicated. It’s: where do we secure the bikes when we put the sorting where we had planned to put the strollers? So there is an equipment problem, bikes are stolen a lot, obviously, especially electric ones which are more expensive. So there is a real problem. And I think that in working-class neighborhoods in particular, the space for cycling in collective housing is a real issue.