Living in the outer suburbs without a car is, first of all, a test of patience. “It takes me 1h30 to get to my job in Paris, if all goes well.”, immediately specifies Dina (23 years old), resident of Chilly-Mazarin (Essonne). To reach the law firm where she is interning, she does not have an RER line in her city and must therefore take a bus and then two metros.
A journey that repeats itself in the evening and which, once the weekend arrives, sometimes discourages her from going out again; “Yes I decline invitations to exhibitions or drinks with friends, generally once every two weeks, because of the travel time”confides the young woman who says she is “in a hurry to leave her parents’ house and move into an apartment in Paris.”
“House arrest”
To describe what Dina and many Ile-de-France residents who are poorly served by public transport experience, Franck Assouly speaks “house arrest”. As spokesperson for the Chemins d’avenir association, specializing in supporting young rural people, he measures the consequences of transport divides on a daily basis. In other words, when the lack of public transport – and the absence of or the complexity of journeys leads to forgoing opportunities and certain journeys.
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Starting with leisure and sport. “49% of young people far from transport have already deprived themselves of a cultural activity, this is significantly more than young urban people”, points out Félix Assouly. But the active lives of 16-29 year olds are not spared. “38% tell us they have already given up on a job offer because of the distance to travel.he continues.
For her part, Andie (23 years old) has realized the difficulty of living without a car in Essonne since she regularly went to her gynecologist in Longjumeau to monitor her pregnancy. From her home in Morangis, it is 4 kilometers as the crow flies, or 12 minutes by car but sometimes an hour or more by public transport, with a change of bus. “You can really lose your life in transport”she gets annoyed.
Correlation with voting
This divide in transport also influences the vote. When we know that in the greater suburbs, 3 out of 5 working people go to work by carthe feeling of exclusion can exacerbate a protest vote.
A joint study of l’association Chemins d’avenir et de l’institut Terram demonstrated a correlation between the vote of young people far from transport during the 2022 presidential elections and the time spent in transport. “Those who spend less than 30 minutes a day in transport are 34% to vote for the National Rally (RN), 43% if they spend between 30 minutes and 2 hours and 49% for more than 2 hours”explains Félix Assouly.
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