While the demonstrations of the last few days have highlighted the dependence of the French on the car and their vulnerability to rising fuel prices, the Climate Action Network and its member associations recall the essential role of the draft law on the orientation of mobility, which will be unveiled in the coming days. Structural measures are expected in order to change our model: to get out of our dependence and vulnerability to oil, to finally reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport and to meet the commitments made in the framework of the Paris Agreement.
L’he rapid development of the transport sector, France's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is essential to comply with the Paris Agreement, which commits France to limiting temperature increases to 2°C and 1.5°C as much as possible. The law on mobility, announced more than a year ago by the President of the Republic, is therefore eagerly awaited by the associations. It is an opportunity to be seized to finally reconcile the issues of social justice, purchasing power and ecological transition. The IPCC report recalled the urgency to act and to make an unprecedented effort to travel and transport better, less and differently.
The increase in fuel taxes contributes to these objectives, but, according to the Climate Action Network, the financial resources that result from this must be redistributed in the form of aid and investment in alternatives to all-road vehicles and individual cars fuelled by oil. All the more so since the measures unveiled so far in the draft bill, in the programming of investments and in the 2019 finance bill take steps in the right direction, but are not yet equal to the climate emergency.
More accessible and environmentally friendly transport solutions for all
Thanks to the future law, all territories should be covered by a mobility organising authority (AOM). This reform could speed up the transition in transport and mobility and the reduction of mobility divides and inequalities. The integration of carbon neutrality as a structuring objective for mobility plans and the financial resources that will be allocated to the AOMs to carry out their mobility missions will be a first marker of the government's sincerity and consistency in getting the population out of its dependence on oil.
For several months now, NGOs have been proposing solutions to ensure that the LOM is up to the challenge of climate and health issues. They have therefore proposed their own bill to fuel the debate. They are now defining five other markers of sincerity and consistency of the government's commitment to achieve carbon neutrality under the climate plan:
1 - The end of diesel and petrol in France requires the inclusion in the law of the Climate Plan commitment to end the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles within a timeframe compatible with the Paris Agreement (2030), to oblige car manufacturers to sell more economical and less polluting vehicles in order to escape the oil trap in the long term. The obligation of low-emission zones in the most polluted agglomerations, to ban the circulation of diesel and petrol vehicles, is also essential to protect public health.
2 - Fiscal justice by putting an end to the tax advantages of polluting transport such as air and truck transport. At this stage, the contribution of road freight transport to the maintenance and improvement of transport networks remains a question mark, even though its impact is considerable.
3 - A "sustainable mobility package" to make it compulsory to reimburse travel by bicycle and car-sharing, as is already the case for public transport and the car. This would encourage large-scale behavioural change.
4 - An unprecedented public investment plan in public transport and cycling, trains, RER, in all territories: 200 million euros per year for cycling, one billion euros for public transport and solutions for more solidarity-based and less polluting mobility in rural and peri-urban areas, the resolution of railway nodes to develop RER-type transport in conurbations.
5 - The abandonment of new road projects which, if carried out, will maintain dependence on cars and oil for decades to come and contribute to urban sprawl and the artificialization of land.
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