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Outline
The Metropolis of Lyon is a territory situated in the east-central region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes with just over 522,000 residents. Like any urban community, it faces a wide variety of transportation challenges and seeks to solve them in the most efficient ways possible. For Lyon’s Mobility Metropolis Department, issues related to road safety, sustainability, and equity are an ever-growing concern. In 2022, they partnered with MICHELIN DDi to better understand their transportation challenge using objective data.
MICHELIN DDi interviewed Pierre Soulard, Director of Infrastructure and Mobility Operations at Lyon Metropolis to learn how partnering with MICHELIN DDi allowed Lyon to fortify its road safety strategy with data-driven insights.
What are the major issues facing the Lyon metropolitan area in terms of urban mobility?
Pierre Soulard: One of our first challenges is accessibility and providing service to the entire territory, with the aim of enabling as many people as possible to get around while preserving the environment and public health. This means offering non-motorized and sustainable mobility solutions by reducing the use of the individual car: using shared mobility (carpooling, public transport), active mobility (walking, cycling) and clean mobility (electric vehicles). Of course, we also have another crucial challenge, which is to achieve Vision Zero (zero deaths and zero serious accidents) in terms of road safety throughout the territory.
In relation to this “Vision Zero”, what are your specific challenges?
Pierre Soulard: Driving behavior is a determining factor in 93% of accidents, infrastructure in 30% and vehicles in 10%. So, we have a lot of work to do in terms of communication and education on driving behaviors as well as in terms of enforcement. As for road assets, they must be as visible as possible to encourage good behavior. And since all of this interacts, we must take all these parameters into account to meet the “Vision Zero” challenge.
What makes MICHELIN DDi insights different for you?
Pierre Soulard: The first point is the frequency of the data provided. It is almost to the second and to the meter, which allows for a high degree of precision in the analysis. The second point is the qualitative contribution, which enables us to characterize driving behavior in a precise and contextualized way. Because of MICHELIN DDi, we have moved from a neighborhood-based approach to an area-based approach with a focus on hotspots. Before, we only had overall data that did not allow us to isolate events in a targeted area. Today, we can really fine-tune our analysis!
“Before we only had overall data, today we can fine-tune our analysis”.
Can you tell us a bit more about your experience of working with MICHELIN DDi?
Pierre Soulard: MICHELIN DDi’s study consisted of analyzing driving data in a targeted critical area with a before-and-after comparison to assess the impact of the road assets changes. The study provided us with very precise feedback with a perfectly detailed analysis. We were able to see, for example, that the installation of an educational radar had a very positive effect on speed. MICHELIN DDi also provided us with a map of at-risk areas in the city of Lyon, which enabled us to identify the critical points requiring specific measures (speed bumps, traffic plan) for the transition to our change in speed limits to 30 km per hour.
You changed your speed limits to 30 km/h in March 2022. What is your assessment of the impact of the measure to date?
Pierre Soulard: It is too early to draw conclusions, but some trends are emerging. We were able to observe that the change to 30 km/h contributed to the fluidity of traffic with less accordion-like traffic and therefore less acceleration and sudden braking. This will have to be confirmed by studies at 6 months, 1 year and 3 years. What seems to be a given is that the involvement of the cities of the Metropolis is real. 10 cities out of 59 have gone to 30 km/h and more than 30 municipalities are in the study phase. The objective is to reach 2/3 of the cities of the Metropolis area very quickly, and we are well on our way!
“The transition to 30 km/h contributes to the fluidity of traffic in the city”.
What about environmental impact. Do you have any trends?
Pierre Soulard: There is some controversy about the environmental impact of the 30km/h city. On a purely technical level, engines are optimized to run at around 70 km/h. Hence some defending the idea that at 30 km/h, the impact is not optimal and the vehicle does not pollute less. Nevertheless, other points should be considered, such as the fact that in a 30 km/h city, there are fewer jolts and the traffic flows more smoothly, which tends to lower vehicle pollution. And lastly, the change to 30 km/h encourages the development of soft transport (cycling, walking), which limits the use of cars and can have a positive impact on the environment. We will therefore see over time and with use what the real effect of 30 km/h is on this point.
