Mobility. Promises of intermodality for sustainable mobility in Bordeaux
Résumé
This chapter looks at how sustainable mobility in Bordeaux, France, has largely come to be consolidated in planning for intermodality. The current transport network in the metropolitan area (comprising 28 municipalities, 800,000 inhabitants) is made up of a road system with a low capacity for change, a public transport system that has reached the limit of its capacity (i.e., the tram network) and the promotion of new forms of mobility (carpooling, cycling, walking) which are conditional upon a change of practices and habits among the residents. The major challenge for the local government is to define a new mobility offer based on better concentric links that can optimize the existing network and deliver the necessary improved connections between residential and economic areas in the growing metropolitan area. This need for an improved transport network has been coupled with the emergence of a change in urban planning in Bordeaux that focuses on densification along the public transport axes. The notions of multimodality and intermodality, which are associated with stations and interchange hubs, have become the main tools for a shifting mobility offer, and they are now an integral part of the local government’s attempts to achieve a less energy-intensive metropolis.