Information at the national level is insufficient for long-term traffic forecasting. To integrate new infrastructure at the national level, regional implications must also be considered. This should be done in two stages: a demographic approach to determine how the car fleet will develop and an econometric method to reveal the factors that influence the sale of fuel and characterise car traffic. Over the next twenty years, the growth of the French household car fleet will differ significantly between regions. The number of potential drivers should increase much faster in the Mediterranean area than in the North or East. Growth will be slower in the Paris area where households became car owners earlier than those in the provinces. Regions also differ in the way they react to variations in fuel price. Isolated areas in the Massif Central are less sensitive to price than the surrounding transit areas. The significant data enhancement obtained by taking regional aspects into consideration has also made it possible to show that income has little influence on traffic, and that the impact of the price of fuel has been extremely irregular since 1973. (A)
Abstract