Good Practice

Heures de Pointe – Rush Hour

Time solutions for tackling rush-hour urban congestion.

Metropolis of Lille
France
Local policy

POLICY OBJECTIVE

The “heures de pointe” project promotes solutions to better balance working and personal time and improve air quality and living conditions by decongesting the metropolis, particularly during rush hour. Focusing on the home-work commute, it contributes to global actions promoted by the Metropolis of Lille for urban commuting.

CONTEXT

Forty per cent of metropolitan greenhouse gas emissions come from road transport. To reduce car use as a transport method, particularly when it comes to home to work commuting, time policies help to improve the living conditions of inhabitants of the metropolis.

POLICY DESCRIPTION

Time actions redirect uses and organisations, and favour solutions that are quicker and more easily implemented than new infrastructure. A systemic approach to mobility is used to address home-work itineraries, putting into action many time levers for limiting road commuting and reducing or avoiding rush-hour urban congestion. Solutions to reduce distances and commuting needs join others already in place to manage mobility (promoting car-sharing, increasing public transport offers, advocating for active mobility).

New services focus on proximity (concierge or custodian services, food delivery, driving children to or from school in a shared way) and solutions involving work organisation (making time schedules more flexible by allowing individuals to arrive or leave earlier; developing telework from workers’ homes or third places).

KEY ASPECTS

Many of the proposed solutions depend on the will of employers. Actions are therefore geared towards heads of publicly- and privately-owned local companies.

RESULTS

Practical solutions, elaborated collectively and tested after consulting many employers, will be disseminated by late 2023.

François

Lescaux

Project Manager of the Time Office

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