Walking, cycling, car… what is the preferred mode of transport for the French to go to work ?

Une majorité de Français continue de se rendre au travail en voiture. PixelsEffect/Getty Images

En dehors des grandes villes, où les transports en commun représentent une alternative privilégiée, la voiture demeure le premier moyen de locomotion pour se déplacer de chez soi jusqu'au travail.

In France, three-quarters of workers (74%) use a car for their home-work journeys, according to the Alphabet France x Ifop 2024 barometer. Although this percentage has tended to decrease slightly over the years (compared to 81% in 2017 during the very first barometer of its kind), the car remains the preferred means of transport for getting to work. Far behind, 27% of respondents use a classic soft mode of transport (walking, cycling, scooter) or electric, 23% prefer public transport and 7% a motorized two-wheeler (or three-wheeler). If the total exceeds 100%, it is because of multimodality, with nearly a third (31%) of workers combining two different means of transport to get to work.

Obviously, this statistic varies depending on the region and the type of city. In urban areas with more than 100,000 inhabitants, the car is used less (64%) than the national average. Conversely, in smaller urban areas, it is more popular (84%). While in the Paris region, only 54% of respondents say they use a car, this figure rises to 83% in the north-eastern quarter of France. Concerning public transport, this mode of transport concerns 51% of workers in the Paris region but does not exceed 9% in the southwest.

Among those who use a car to get to work, 88% currently drive a combustion engine vehicle. However, almost half of those surveyed (47%) plan to switch to an electric or hybrid engine in the future, because it is more environmentally friendly (50%), more economical (48%), quieter (31%) and more pleasant (27%). Today, only 10% of those surveyed say they have a company or service vehicle. In the rare case of an electrified vehicle, they almost always (83%) benefit from a charging solution provided by their company, mainly at their workplace.

18 km between the workplace and home

According to this study, the average distance of journeys between home and work is 18 km, for an estimated time of 25 minutes. Here again, there are many differences depending on the regions studied. In the Paris region, only 17% of workers take 10 minutes or less to travel from home to work, and 43% take 30 minutes or more. On the other hand, in the South-East for example, 33% take 10 minutes or less, and only 20% take 30 minutes or more.

For 30% of respondents, this journey between their home and work has a relatively negative impact on their quality of life and their working conditions, in particular because of the loss of time it causes (52%), overcrowding (51%), the risk of delay (45%) or accidents (42%). 70% of them even say that the level of difficulty of the home-work journey weighs in the choice of staying in a company or applying elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly, 80% of those surveyed would like to see their type of mobility to get to work change in the future. They would like their journeys to be more economical (40%), faster (31%) and more environmentally friendly (25%).

This study was conducted online by Ifop for Alphabet France, a specialist in vehicle rental for companies, from June 17 to 21, 2024 among 1,002 working French people aged 18 and over.