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. Then you get it: there are empty parking slots, which is highly unusual in big French towns.
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.
The effects were clear recently during 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. "That is an awfully difficult problem," acknowledges Joel Crawford, an author and leader of the "car free" movement picking up adherents all over Europe. "You can’t take cars oat 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."
Last week, 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 alternatives to driving so as to promote "Clever Commuting", the theme of this year’s EU campaign. Volunteers pedaled rickshaws along the cobbled streets, charging passengers $1.20 an hour; bikes were available for free; and city workers encouraged children to walk to school along routes supervised by adults acting as Pied Pipers and picking up kids at arranged stops.
The centerpiece is a state-of-the-art tramway providing service to much of the town, and a network of free, multistory parking lots to encourage commuters to "park and ride". Rene Vincendo, a retired hospital worker waiting at one such parking lot for his wife to return from the city center, is sold. "To go into town, this is brilliant," he says. "I never take my car in now."
It is not cheap, though. Beyond the construction costs, City Hall subsidizes fares to the tune of 60 million euros ($ 72 million) a year, making passengers pay only 40 percent of operating costs.
That is the only way to draw people onto trams and buses, says de Rugy, since Nantes, like many European cities, is expanding, and commuters find themselves with ever-longer distances to travel. 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." 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."
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 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".
What’s the difference between Nantes and other cities which want reduction in car use