The car-sharing service of the Lyon Metropolis, Citiz, is struggling to take off, making a loss despite an acceleration in its deployment. The objective stated by the executive of 3,600 vehicles by 2030 currently seems far away.
The 3,600 vehicles targeted by 2030 are still difficult to imagine. Tuesday, December 3, the environmentalist president of the Métropole de Lyon, Bruno Bernard and Fabien Bagnon, vice-president in charge of roads and active mobility, presented a quick assessment of the Citiz car-sharing service, supported by the Métropole de Lyon via the Public company Locale des Mobilités, Lyon auto park (LPA).
A deficit of 3 million euros per year
“An important tool to combat solo driving (refers to traveling alone in a car, Editor's note) and allow residents in the heart of the urban area to abandon their personal vehicle“, estimates Bruno Bernard. According to the metropolis of Lyon, a third of the inhabitants of the urban area have given up owning a car.
Launched in 2008, the service has since grown significantly, experiencing a marked acceleration since the coming to power of an environmentalist executive. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of vehicles increased sixfold to today reach nearly 600, distributed between 220 stations located in 34 municipalities in the Lyon metropolitan area. The number of subscribers to the service increased from 5,000 to 14,000, insufficient to allow Citiz to reach financial balance, with a deficit of 3 million euros per year, with 8 million expenses for only 5 million revenue.
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Reach 3,600 vehicles in 2030? “We will have to speed up”recognizes the Metropolis of Lyon
“The service will tend towards economic balance. We will launch a plan to attract new users at the beginning of 2025“, indicates Fabien Bagnon who also wants to go”conquer the associative public who sometimes invest in vehicles while car sharing can meet their needs“. The Metropolis and LPA will need new subscribers, and a lot of them, to finance their “public car sharing service”, the master plan of which was adopted by the metropolitan council in December 2023. By 2030, these are between 3,400 and 3,600 vehicles which must be deployed throughout the territory. The objective stated at the time was to achieve a network of stations of three vehicles, spaced apart. on average 330 meters.
But in 2024, only 200 new vehicles and 70 new stations will enrich the Citiz offer. To achieve its objective, the Metropolis must increase to 600 new vehicles per year between 2025 and 2030. “We will have to speed up” recognizes Fabien Bagnon who nevertheless indicates that a Citiz station has already been offered to each municipality in the region. “Not everyone was interested“, he specifies. Also, to seek out the most precarious, the Métropole de Lyon indicated in December 2023 that it wanted to put in place solidarity pricing. For the moment, the financial situation of Citiz, of LPA but also of the Métropole de Lyon (forced to cut the budgets of its delegations) does not seem to create a dynamic favorable to the implementation of such pricing, even though the executive seeks to increase the revenue generated by the service.
Read also: The right opposed to the public car-sharing service of the Métropole de Lyon
What place for private operators?
During last December's vote, the right deplored a form of “nationalisation” at great expense of a service provided by private operators, in this case: Leo&Go, Drivalia and Bolt. Fabien Bagnon assures him of the “complementarity” of the two services, the private operators not developing their offer outside the core of the agglomeration for the sake of profitability But in the long term, private operators in free-floating (journeys from point A to point B) could suffer from large-scale development of Citiz.
For now, “lThe problem is parking“, Vincent Frey, general manager at Leo&Go, told Lyon Capitale. And added:“We pay a fee to the City for this parking right. However, our users waste time trying to park and they are billed for this time. We would therefore like to obtain reserved spaces.” “Discussions are underway“, indicates Fabien Bagnon.
