Île-de-France: an evaluation after six months for the experiment of reserved carpooling lanes

The experiment of reserved carpooling lanes on two motorways serving Paris from the beginning of March will be evaluated six months later, to decide whether or not to maintain them, the government announced on Wednesday. The motorways concerned by the activation of these lanes in the event of saturation from March 3 are the A1 (over 11.3 km in the province-Paris direction from 6:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., and 3 km in the opposite direction from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.), and the A13 (only in the direction of Paris, over 7 km, between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m.).

"These lanes, which operate on a priority principle, will only be accessible to public transport, taxis, emergency vehicles and vehicles carrying at least two occupants. Vehicles with a total weight of more than 3.5 tonnes and which are not public transport vehicles will be excluded from this system," the Ministry of Regional Planning and Decentralisation stated in a press release.

"A review of the experiment will be carried out after six months, in order to assess its effectiveness, its impact on traffic flow and safety conditions. At the end of this assessment, a decision will be made to maintain or suspend the measure of reserved lanes," the government stressed.

At the beginning of February, the Paris city hall announced that a lane reserved for carpooling and public transport would also come into force on March 3 during the week during rush hours (from 7:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.) on the ring road, which falls under the jurisdiction of the municipality.

The reserved lane is being set up as part of an "experiment" with no end date, the town hall had specified, which had undertaken to regularly publish monitoring indicators, as it did for the reduction of the maximum speed to 50 km/h on the ring road. For its part, the government said on Wednesday that it hoped that a six-month assessment would also be made of the experiment with the reserved lane on the ring road, "in the interests of consistency for users" .