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Nantes</title></head><body>
<div>thanks to John D'Avolio:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0923/p01s04-woeu.html?s=hns</div>
<div> </div>
<div>from the September 23, 2005 edition</div>
<div> </div>
<div><b>Just hop in the car? Not so fast, says one French
town.</b></div>
<div><b> <br>
By</b> <a
href=
"http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=D0E5F4E5F2A0C6EFF2E4"
><b> Peter Ford</b></a> | Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor<br>
<br>
<b>NANTES, FRANCE</b> - It takes a while, as you walk around the
streets of Nantes, a city of half a million people on the banks of the
Loire River, to realize just what it is that is odd.<br>
<br>
Then you get it: There are empty parking slots.<br>
<br>
That is highly unusual in big French towns, normally clogged with
traffic crawling along ancient thoroughfares. But here, Thursday, as
one policeman said, "ça roulait bien" - cars were
rolling.<br>
<br>
Two decades of effort to make life more livable by dissuading people
from driving into town has made Nantes a beacon for other European
cities seeking to shake dependence on the automobile.<br>
<br>
"We are not anticar," says François de Rugy, deputy mayor
in charge of transport. "But we send people a lot of signals: If
they come into town on buses, on foot, by train, or by bike, we will
help them. If they come in cars, we won't."<br>
<br>
The effects were clear Thursday, the high point of Mobility Week, a
campaign sponsored by the European Union that prompted more than 1,000
towns across the Continent to test ways of making their streets, if
not car-free, at least manageable.<br>
<br>
"That is an awfully difficult problem," acknowledges Joel
Crawford, an author and leader of the "car free" movement
that is picking up adherents all over Europe. "You can't take
cars out of cities until there is some sort of alternative in place.
But there are a lot of forces pointing in the direction of a major
reduction in car use, like the rise in fuel prices, and concerns about
global warming."<br>
<br>
Thursday, proclaiming the slogan "In Town, Without my Car!"
hundreds of cities closed off whole chunks of their centers to all but
essential traffic. Nantes closed just a few streets, preferring to
focus on the alternatives to driving so as to promote "Clever
Commuting," the theme of this year's EU campaign.<br>
<br>
Volunteers pedaled rickshaws along the cobbled streets, charging
passengers $1.20 an hour; bikes were available for free; and city
workers encouraged children to walk to school along routes supervised
by adults acting as Pied Pipers and picking up kids at arranged
stops.<br>
<br>
Some critics dismissed the idea as a gimmick. "We live in a
society that is organized, like it or not, in such a way that we
cannot do without cars," Christian Gerondeau, president of the
French Federation of Auto Clubs, told French radio. "Stigmatizing
the car is the wrong battle."<br>
<br>
Authorities in Nantes, though, are trying to show that there might be
another way.<br>
</div>
<div>The centerpiece of their efforts is a state-of-the-art tramway
providing service to much of the town, and a network of free,
multistory parking lots to encourage commuters to "park and
ride."<br>
<br>
Rene Vincendo, a retired hospital worker waiting at one such parking
lot for his wife to return from the city center, is sold. "To go
into town, this is brilliant," he says. "I never take my car
in now."<br>
<br>
Indeed, a poll in April by the tramway authority found that 95 percent
of users were satisfied with the service.<br>
<br>
It is not cheap, though. Beyond the construction costs, city hall
subsidizes fares to the tune of 60 million euros ($72 million) a year,
making passengers pay only 40 percent of operating costs.<br>
<br>
That is the only way to draw people onto trams and buses, says Mr. de
Rugy, since Nantes, like many European cities, is expanding, and
commuters find themselves with ever-longer distances to travel.<br>
<br>
It's a chicken-and-egg problem, says John Adams, a professor of
geography at University College in London. There is no longer room in
European cities for cars to park, so drivers must live farther from
work, and the traffic increase obliges urban planners to devote more
room to roads and parking, which worsens urban sprawl.</div>
<div> <br>
The danger, he warns, is that "the further you go down the route
of car dependence, the harder it is to return, because so many shops,
schools, and other services are built beyond the reach of any
financially feasible public transport network."<br>
<br>
This, adds de Rugy, means that "transport policy is only half the
answer. Urban planners and transport authorities have to work hand in
hand to ensure that services are provided close to transport
links."<br>
<br>
The carrot-and-stick approach that Nantes has taken - cutting back on
parking in the town center and making it expensive, while improving
public transport - has not actually reduced the number of cars on the
road. But it has "put a brake on the increase we would have seen
otherwise" and that other European cities have seen, says
Dominique Godineau, head of the city's "mobility
department."<br>
<br>
City Hall has other plans afoot to keep up the pressure. This week it
launched a website to connect potential carpoolers. It has put out
tenders for a car-sharing system that would allow city dwellers to
rent a car for a few hours from curbside locations with the swipe of a
magnetic card.<br>
<br>
The authorities are also encouraging big employers to match up to 15
percent of workers' monthly bus and tram passes.<br>
<br>
"There is no single solution, but the important thing is to be
coherent," says de Rugy. "There is no point in spending
money on these sorts of things and still building more
roads."<br>
<br>
"You get what you pay for," adds Mari Jussi, a transport
analyst at the Estonian branch of the Stockholm Environment Institute.
"If you put money into tarmac, you get more cars. If you invest
more in cycle lanes and safer streets, that's what you get. We have
solutions now, but politicians are not eager to apply them."<br>
<br>
Alain Chenard knows that only too well. As Mayor of Nantes in the
early 1980s, he began building the city's tram line, the first modern
tramway in France. The inconvenience of the construction and the price
cost him his job in 1983.<br>
<br>
"It seemed mad at the time," says Thomas Renaud, a cook, as
he rode the tram to visit his parents. "But it paid off
royally."</div>
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