Despite real investment efforts and the free service introduced three years ago, public transport is struggling to compete with private cars in Luxembourg.
"The culture of the car is really dominant and it remains quite complicated to attract motorists to public transport", explains to AFP Merlin Gillard, mobility specialist at the Luxembourg research center Liser.
At the end of 2021, this small country of 650,000 inhabitants wedged between Germany, Belgium and France had the second highest motorization rate in the EU, with 681 private cars per 1,000 inhabitants, according to the Eurostat institute. Among the Twenty-Seven, only Poland exceeds this figure (687).
"I often say, the Germans build the cars and the Luxembourgers buy them," jokes the Minister of Mobility in the Grand Duchy, François Bausch, who notes however that traffic has become more fluid in the capital since the tram was put into circulation in 2017.
At a time of transition to carbon neutrality, the ruling coalition, which brings together liberals, socialists and environmentalists, is highlighting its heavy investments to attract the population to cleaner transport.
The government boasts an annual investment of 800 million euros in its public transport. The country holds the European record for expenditure on the tramway, with 500 euros per person and per year invested "in the extension and quality of the network", notes Mr. Bausch, Minister of the Environment.
"It is the country that invests the most in Europe" in this area, agrees Merlin Gillard. "But Luxembourg comes from very far away", "we are catching up with investments that have been very low for years", assures the expert.
Central station renovated from top to bottom, ultra-modern funicular, dedicated lanes for buses and trams: in the capital Luxembourg-city, the progress is welcomed by the users met by AFP, who also underline the benefits of free access. An unprecedented measure in Europe, where no State had ever introduced it throughout its territory.
This free "facilitates the decision when choosing between public transport and car", and "it is very positive for the environment", argues Edgar Bisenius, manager of a financial services SME.
"Transportation is a fundamental right for the inhabitants. If we have the right to work, we also have the right to be taken to work, without too much cost", says Ben Dratwicki.
This French teacher, who lives in the capital and travels there by bicycle, explains taking the funicular and then the train to get to the high school where he teaches, 20 kilometers to the north.
Such behavior still seems to be in the minority, according to the traffic jams that persist at rush hour on the main roads.
Because the particularity of the country is that it attracts 220,000 cross-border workers to its soil every day, which represents almost half of the total number of employees.
These cross-border commuters, mainly from France and Belgium, are excluded from the benefit of free transport for the part of the journey made in their country of residence. A brake to leave the car behind.
For the 120,000 French "commuters", who work and pay taxes in the Grand Duchy, the Luxembourg government has agreed to partially redistribute the money by financing infrastructure such as car parks on the French side of the border.
François Bausch also promised a Thionville-Luxembourg train every seven minutes by 2027-2028. A frequency "almost comparable to the metro", argued the minister.
Merlin Gillard points to another limit of the Luxembourg "model", namely a saturated real estate market and increasingly expensive rents, preventing, according to him, the installation of cross-border workers who would like it.
These are in a way doubly sanctioned, according to the expert: "They cannot afford housing, and in addition must pay for transport anyway".
23/03/2023 07:28:11 - Luxembourg (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
