Belgium/Worker mobility in the province of Liège: cycling is on the rise, but the car is still king
For the tenth year running, HR services company Acerta has mapped the commuting habits of over 382,000 workers in the province of Liège: cycling is on the rise, but the car remains king.
89.3% of workers in Liège rely solely on the car for all their journeys, and of these, two out of ten (23.2%) travel by company car.
"The gradient of the route to be covered is generally higher in the province of Liège, which can make travel more difficult, for example by bicycle. For workers, the car is still the fastest means of transport, but it may also make it easier to pick up children from school. Employers may also not provide or have the possibility of providing showers for workers who might come by bike and have a fairly long commute", explains Emel Ozyasar, director of the Acerta office in Liège.
Nevertheless, cycling is on the up: one in 20 workers (5%) in the province of Liège uses it to get to work, a record figure.That's 75% more workers than five years ago, although the proportion is still slightly lower than for public transport (5.7%).
It's worth noting that the people of Liège don't seem to be very keen on combined mobility, i.e. combining several means of transport. As Emel Ozyasar explains, they continue to rely mainly on a single means of transport for their journeys. "We can assume above all that current infrastructures are not totally optimal. There may also be a feeling of insecurity among workers who travel by bike, as the roads are not very passable and not very accessible, either by bike or even by public transport. Nevertheless, there has been an increase, which is encouraging for the future. We need to continue to improve our infrastructure, to add to it, to guarantee safety and motivate workers to adopt a different means of transport".
The people of Liège prefer to live close to work
Around eight out of ten people (83.6%) who live in Liège also work there. And workers who cross the provincial border to go to work mostly go to Namur (3.7%).
On average, Belgians live 21.2 kilometers from their workplace. The distance is greater in Wallonia (25.6 kilometers) than in Flanders (20.8 kilometers). In Liège, the distance is 23.6 kilometers.
Source: www.rtbf.be/
