Diffusion of car ownership and use in Paris metropolitan area since the mid-70’s

In France, the growth of car ownership has slowed down and individual car traffic has stagnated since the beginning of the 2000’s, especially in most urbanized areas. Indeed, in Paris metropolitan area, the saturation is older, car ownership has saturated during the 90’s and the individual mileage reached a maximum during the 80’s, so earlier to the rise in fuel price. Thus, this trend seems to show a precursor movement in urbanized areas. In the mid-70's, car ownership and use were quite low for the poorest income quartile, but the gap has much decreased with the three higher income groups. However, inequality index stabilized and even increased in the 2000’s for the inhabitants of Paris region, showing that the diffusion of cars in society seems to reach its limits. As the curves representing car ownership (number of cars per adult) and car use (annual mileage per household) seem to become quite horizontal during the most recent period, logistic curves have been estimated for each quartile of the distribution of households by income per consumption unit, according to time, then to real income. We describe this process since 1974 in Paris region. Saturation thresholds are estimated, as well as the date (or the income) of inflexion. We can place the saturation between 0.4 and 0.6 cars per adult according to the standard of living, and the mileage between 9 800 km and 13 000 km per household. Fuel price has a significant impact on car use, while it is less important for car ownership