The director of Transilien, Sylvie Charles, is calling for "better smoothing" of home-work journeys during the week, while Fridays are still a much less frequented day on regional transport due to the massive use of teleworking on the eve of the weekend.
If the number of people using public transport in Ile-de-France, and in particular "mass transit" (RER, trains, metro...), is between 80 and 85% of its level in 2019, some days are much more saturated than others due to the choice of employees as to which days they work from home.
"There is an 18% gap between Tuesdays - the busiest days - and Fridays in mass transit," said Ms. Charles, at the presentation of a study conducted in the spring in partnership with the Paris Region Institute, the regional urban planning agency.
"This detracts from the benefits you can get from telecommuting with less crowded transportation, for example," she said.
"Such a differential is not good for anyone and the interest is to better smooth out because as soon as there is overload, there are risks of jostling, drivers cannot respect the parking time and by snowball effect, the transport system is less efficient", insisted Sylvie Charles.
In Ile-de-France, 68% of jobs are concentrated in 6% of the territory "so you need transportation to work". According to the study, employees who can do so choose to telework on Fridays because "it is more relaxing not to have to travel on the last day of the week", "it allows you to do domestic tasks before the weekend" or "it allows you to leave earlier or more easily for the weekend".
For Sylvie Charles and Nicolas Bauquet, Managing Director of the Paris Region Institute, employees should be encouraged to come to the office on Fridays "to avoid the overcrowding" of transport on certain days.
According to a survey conducted by BVA, while a quarter of employees say that nothing would make them come to work on Fridays, a third would be willing to do so if there are "more colleagues or face-to-face meetings on Fridays". The study also suggests the organization of convivial events.
In Ile-de-France, 43% of the working population telework on average 2.4 days per week. This proportion rises to 55% for regular users of the Transilien.
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