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Mobility in low-density area: putting an end to the illusion of “public transport everywhere”
How can we deliver effective, low-carbon mobility outside metropolitan centres without squandering public finances?
The answer lies in a single principle: stop rolling out the same service everywhere, target mass transit where flows justify it and put the right mode in the right place. In an uncompromising address for Geonexio, Jean Coldefy points to the limits of the current model and calls for a shock of pragmatism between technical relevance, investment choices and governance.
What obstacles stand in the way of mobility in low-density areas? - Jean Coldefy
In this interview filmed at the event organised in April 2026 by Geonexio, the think & do tank of Transdev in France, Jean Coldefy analyses the challenges of organising mobility in France. He stresses the need to adapt transport solutions to the realities of each local area, making more effective use of public resources and developing networks capable of serving the main travel flows between urban, peri-urban and rural areas.
We have a significant degree of administrative layering, which means that important decisions affecting the daily lives of French citizens are no longer made at the municipal level, but at a supra-municipal level, without direct universal suffrage. As a result, objectively speaking, people no longer understand who is making these decisions. The second major issue is that, because of this rural versus urban divide, which is once again largely artificial, there is a desire to provide public transport everywhere. However, the very principle of public transport is that it must be used. Public transport is mass transit, and for it to be effective, it requires population density. Therefore, we need to prioritize our efforts. This means analyzing travel flows and identifying where sufficient numbers of people are traveling between specific origins and destinations. Wherever demand is high enough, flows can be consolidated and public transport services can be deployed. This is precisely the purpose of the SERM (Metropolitan Regional Express Services). We know that regional rail services (TER) serving cities are currently operating at full capacity, so we must also consider coach services. Coaches can connect origins and destinations that will never be served by rail, simply because there is no railway infrastructure, while also complementing existing rail links where additional capacity is needed. We need to be more efficient. If we accept that public funding is a scarce resource and that it must be used in the most effective way possible, then we will need to focus public investment where it can deliver the greatest impact.
The administrative layer cake: citizens losing their bearings
When it comes to mobility, the stacking of administrative layers and responsibilities makes decisions impossible to read. Structuring decisions are now taken at supra-municipal levels without direct election, which distances citizens from the way transport policy is made.
This distance has a political cost. When no one can clearly identify who decides on transport services in their area, investment choices become difficult to explain, and even harder to accept.
Targeting mass transit where it makes sense
Trying to roll out bus or rail lines uniformly everywhere is an ecological and financial mistake. By definition, public transport is mass transport, which requires a certain density to be relevant. In low-density areas, two levers stand out:
• Analysing origin-destination flows precisely, to identify priority corridors, rather than modelling services on administrative boundaries.
• Building on rail and coach complementarity: with regional trains saturated, express coaches are the solution for the future on peri-urban links where there is no rail line.
The requirement for budgetary efficiency
As public resources become scarcer, every euro invested in the mobility transition must be maximized. A line oversized relative to its ridership permanently ties up operating resources that would be missing elsewhere on corridors where demand genuinely exists.
The issue is therefore not to set transport modes against each other, but to put the right mode in the right place, accepting that the answer will not be the same in a metropolitan area as in a peri-urban living area.
“Public transport is mass transport: it requires a certain density to be relevant. The issue is not to set modes against each other, but to put the right mode in the right place”
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