Innovative solutions have been implemented to promote sustainable mobility in urban areas. In the Nantes area (northwestern part of France), alternatives to single-occupant car use have increased in the past few years. In the urban area, there is an efficient public transport supply, including tramways and a “busway” (Bus Rapid Transit), as well as bike-sharing services. In periurban and rural areas, there are carpool areas, regional buses and the new “tram-train” lines. In this article, we focus on the impact on house prices of these “sustainable” transportation infrastructures and policies, in order to evaluate their values. The implicit price of these sustainable transport offers was estimated through hedonic price functions describing the Nantes urban and periurban/rural housing markets. Spatial regression models (SAR, SEM, SDM and GWR) were carried out to capture the effect of both spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity. The results show patterns of spatial heterogeneity of transportation offer implicit prices at two scales: (i) between urban and periurban/rural areas, as well as (ii) within each territory. In the urban area, the distance to such offers was significantly associated with house prices. These associations varied by type of transportation system (positive for tramway and railway stations and negative for bike-sharing stations). In periurban and rural areas, having a carpool area in a 1500-m buffer around the home was negatively associated with house prices, while having a regional bus station in a 500-m buffer was non-significant. Distance to the nearest railway station was negatively associated with house prices. These findings provide research avenues to help public policy-makers promote sustainable mobility and pave the way for more locally targeted interventions.

Despite its advantages, road transport generates negative externalities. To reduce them, the use of single-occupant vehicles (SOVs) must be limited to promote other transport modes (active modes, public transport and shared mobility). This paper aims to examine the economic and non-economic incentives (as persuasive technologies and psychological factors) for a modal shift to sustainable mobility solutions. The independent application of these two types of measures has revealed effectiveness but also limitations. Economic incentives pose a problem of social acceptability for economic agents and limit the freedom to drive. The boomerang effect and ineffectiveness in specific cultural and economic contexts are the main limitations of non-economic incentives. To maximize effectiveness in terms of modal shift towards sustainable mobility solutions, economic and non-economic incentives need to be combined.JEL classification: R41, R48, H23, H39.

In an effort to counter the COVID-19 pandemic, France introduced safety measures that changed people’s capacity to move around. To what extent can these changes be opportunities for more sustainable mobility in the long term? While numerous studies have analyzed the impact of the pandemic on mobility using quantitative or short-term data, few have explored how individuals themselves experienced and reinterpreted these changes over time. In this article, we address this gap by providing a qualitative, longitudinal perspective on how residents of the Paris region adjusted their mobility practices during and after the pandemic. Between March and April 2023, we conducted qualitative interviews to discover what had occurred during and after the pandemic. Through 19 biographical interviews with people from the Parisian region, we get a retrospective view of the pandemic’s impact on mobility from March 2020 to April 2023. The results show that the pandemic had very little effect on the mode of transport, but did have a long-term effect on the frequency of work-related trips (particularly with the strong growth of work from home), and to a lesser extent on the frequency of travel for leisure and non-food purchases. Even though participants share the perceived risk of using public transport, this does not lead to a modal shift. Our findings highlight the importance of situating the effects of the pandemic within broader contextual, personal, and professional dynamics, offering new insights into how crisis-driven disruptions can shape long-term mobility patterns.