Paris: a Desire Named Streetcar

Martin Koning (1) , Rémy Prud'Homme (2) , Pierre Kopp (1)

1 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
2 UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12

On the southern part of the Parisian Maréchaux' boulevards, the old bus line Petite Ceinture has been replaced by a modern tramway (T3). Simultaneously, the road-space has been narrowed by about a third. A survey conducted on 1,000 users of the T3 shows that the tramway hardly generated any modal report from the private cars (PC) towards the public transit (PT). However, it did generate important intra-modal transfers: from bus and subways towards tramway concerning the PT, surely from Maréchaux' boulevards towards the Parisian Ring-Road (boulevard périphérique, PRR) and/or adjacent streets for the PC. The various benefits and costs of these changes are evaluated in this research. The welfare gains made by PT users are more than compensated by the time losses of the motorists, and in particular, by the additional cost of road congestion on the PRR. The same conclusion applies with regard to CO2 emissions: the reductions saved with the replacement of the busses and some (few) PC are less important than the increased pollution induced by the lengthening of the automobile trips and the increased congestion on the PRR. Even if one ignores the initial investment of 350 M€, the social impact of the T3 project, illustrated by its Clear Discount Value (CDV), is strongly negative. This is especially true for suburbanites. Concerning the lonely inhabitants (electors) of Paris, our analysis shows that they pocket the main part of the benefits while supporting a weak fraction of the costs.

Mots clés: Tramway; Costs-Benefits Analysis; Road Congestion; CO2 Emissions

Domaines: Economies et finances

Martin Koning, Rémy Prud'Homme, Pierre Kopp. Paris: a Desire Named Streetcar. 2010. ⟨halshs-00467896⟩