Spreading Peak Demand through Changes in Working and School Hours: The Experience of Clermont-Ferrand

The Transport Authority of Clermont-Ferrand (France) has been facing the challenge of overcrowding on its tramway line for many years. It therefore considered an innovative approach to tackle the issue, by focusing on demand management. The objective is to convince some organizations located along the line to change their working arrangements, so that their employees would avoid travelling during peak hours on the line. TTK, a German-French mobility planning and consulting company, was in charge of studying the opportunity and feasibility of this approach. For that purpose, a model was developed to assess how changes could improve the line overcrowding (or, how they could worsen the situation if not coordinated). This model was developed in-house, as traditional macro-simulation tools cannot be precise enough to understand the impact of 5 or 10 min changes on the line saturation. Model results identified several opportunities, and two organizations took first steps to implement change. Even with the sole participation of those two organizations, the SMTC saw a decrease of 5% demand at the peak times over a one-year period, a demand spread to off-peak times. This encouraging result led the SMTC to keep working with the organizations to develop this dynamic to other sites.