This may be the debate for the start of the 2022 school year: do we slow down on the highways or not? Green deputy Sandrine Rousseau recently made this proposal in an interview with the Parisian:
“Driving fast on the motorway with large cars is a form of comfort, but given the ecological emergency, today it is no longer possible,” stressed the elected representative of the 9th arrondissement of Paris.
Go back to 90km/h, “a double mistake”
Sandrine Rousseau is also highly critical of the many departments (currently 42) that have decided to go back to a 90 km/h limitation instead of 80 km/h, a limitation that should have become the norm since 2018.
For her, it is simply a “double mistake, both moral and environmental. Moral, because it gives the signal that the slightest restriction is unbearable. We must get out of this idea because we are going to have to change our path.” of life, come what may. At an environmental level, going from 90 to 80 km/h represents a 7% reduction in CO2 emissions and any emission of CO2 into the atmosphere aggravates the situation”.
Except that this failed reform of the 80km/h could precisely dissuade the government of Elisabeth Borne from proposing a step to 110 or 120km/h instead of 130km/h in its Climate Law project presented at the beginning of the school year.
However, the context remains favorable to such a measure. In fact, we are witnessing a certain environmental awareness of the French population, marked by the clearly visible signs of climate change and the historical echo of the oil crisis. It was in 1973, at the height of the explosion in fuel prices, that a limit of 100 km/h was adopted in France on the national network. A measure motivated above all by an objective of reducing road mortality, which reached its maximum in 1972, but which allowed, with this argument of energy sobriety, to be more accepted by the French.
Lost time for the planet… and the wallet?
Rebel in 2022? I’m not sure if we take the example of the reform of 80 km/h. Olivier Amrane, president of the Ardèche departmental council, a department that has just returned to 90 km/h, recalled on BFMTV that this measure had been taken as a “unilateral decision descended from Paris in 2018”, with that setback that we now know. since 2019.
After the crisis of the yellow vests and the numerous destructions of automatic radars, the government had finally allowed each department to set a partial or total return to 90 km/h or remain at 80 km/h. Which incidentally has created some confusion since then, with a rule depending on the type of road that can vary several times in the same route.
Ultimately, this debate about speed limits (both on the national network and on motorways) comes down to a balance between time spent on the road and environmental impact.
Thus, the president of the Ardèche departmental council greatly overestimated the time savings: in fact, he evoked 20 minutes of time savings (“10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon”) on a daily commute from 100 kilometres, while in reality we gain less than 9 minutes getting back to 90 km/h over this distance.
In the same distance of 100 kilometers, going from 130 to 110 km/h, almost equivalent time is lost, with a journey that goes from 46 to 54 minutes.
On the other hand, slowing down allows you to reduce consumption (the faster you drive, the more you consume) and therefore emissions. A test carried out on a Citroën C4 Diesel by our colleagues at Progress on a trip of 500 kilometers at 130 km/h and at 110 km/h therefore 42 minutes are lost, but for a reduction in fuel consumption of 25%.
And in an electric car, whose sales have taken off in recent months in France, consumption can be halved by lowering its speed in the same proportions: enough to make up for lost time driving more slowly, saving a recharging stop. additional on this same route.
Lower consumption also means a gain in purchasing power, which is quite interesting when France is experiencing record inflation.
“By going from 90 to 80 km/h, for a year in France, we saved a million tonnes of CO2. We also saved 500 million liters of petrol. At 2 euros a litre, that’s still a billion euros and I think it is the purchasing power needed by the people who most depend on their car, for example, recently stressed the environmentalist senator for French residents abroad Mélanie Vogel, referring to a measure “good both for purchasing power and for the climate”.
Beyond the drop in consumption, an expected effect of a drop in speed would be to make the highways, and therefore the car, less attractive compared to the train for long trips, or public transport for daily trips, such as Sandrine Rousseau pointed out on Europe 1 at the end of July.
Are the French (really) ready to slow down?
With all their arguments, it’s hard to believe that motorists would be unwilling to slow down. It is therefore not surprising to see that an Ifop poll recently appeared that 63% of French people would potentially be in favor of a reduced limit of 110 km/h.
Except that this survey commissioned by the “Act for the Environment” association actually raised the issue of slowing down on the motorway… “specifically for the purpose of saving fuel.” A precision that according to the spokeswoman for the association of the League of pilots, Alexandra Legendre, “changes everything” in the results obtained, can be read in a column published by Capital at the end of July.
In this text, we can also retain three arguments against this lowering of the limits from 130 to 110: the transfer of traffic to the free national network and to the so-called secondary roads (while the motorway network is five times safer) , the resurgence of drowsiness at the wheel (the leading cause of death on the motorway) and a possible break-in of the points on the driver’s license.
A not so favorable balance
On these different points, we can also point out that the reduction of fatalities on the road was the number one objective of the move to 80 km/h (although we also mentioned in a secondary way the gain in fuel consumption). But the very positive results touted by the Ministry of the Interior actually appear to be mixed, even “hypocritical and misleading”, as an analysis by the League of Drivers denounced in September 2021.
And, as for the positive effects for the planet of a reduction in speed limits, we should also revise our expectations… downwards. This is what already emerged in September 2021, following the generalization of 30 km/h in Paris and that the question arose precisely for the motorway network.
According to a 2018 study by the General Commission for Sustainable Development (CGDD), the actual speed on the motorway in France is 113 km/h. By increasing to a maximum of 110 km/h, the real speed would increase to 108 km/h on average, that is, a CO2 gain of 0.9 million tons per year, the equivalent of 0.2% of the emissions of CO2 in France.
The study had also quantified the overall cost of the measure, especially the loss of time linked to this drop in traffic. We then arrive at 65 million hours lost per year, or 900 million euros lost… against 4 million gained thanks to avoided CO2 emissions.
Beyond these battles of figures, it would be rather the unpopularity of such a measure that would block its implementation: in 2020, Emmanuel Macron himself had rejected this proposal from the Citizen Convention for Climate to generalize 110 km/h on motorways .
And if the current Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, then Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition, said that she was “personally favourable”, she had remained cautious, judging “it is important, on issues like this, to verify that there is indeed support from the French and those who are directly interested.
Source: BFM TV
