Ridesharing helps dodge strikes in Paris
ARGENTEUIL, FRANCE >> Adrien Lachevre and Nailat Msoili live a few kilometers (miles) apart in Paris’ northwest suburbs, but their paths had never crossed until Lachevre picked Msoili up in his gray Fiat on Tuesday morning.
An app had matched their schedules and morning commutes, and the two had arranged to meet at a nearly deserted gas station well before dawn, hoping to beat the traffic that has clogged highways in recent days.
As a general strike across France stretched into its sixth day, they were among many commuters who have turned to technology — and strangers — to get by.
Use of carpool apps, big and small, has spiked. So has demand for shared bikes and electric scooters that you activate with your phone and pick up and drop off where you want. Commuters are finding places to sleep near their workplaces via Facebook or online couch-surfing communities.
All this is changing the nature of French strikes, undercutting unions’ power to paralyze the country.
Only about a fifth of French trains ran normally on Tuesday, and many Paris subway lines remained closed as transit workers and other unions protested President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed overhaul of the country’s pension system. Teachers, health care workers and bus drivers were among those taking to the streets.
Carpooling startups are among the big winners.
Msoili, a receptionist in the Paris suburb of SaintDenis, usually takes a train and a bus to work each morning. For the first two days of the walkout, she stayed at a friend’s house close to her job.
When the strike outlasted the weekend, she took a colleague’s recommendation and signed up for BlaBlaLines, a city ridesharing service set up by popular French long-distance carpooling company BlaBlaCar.
BlaBlaLines drivers, unlike those with Uber, aren’t trying to make a living from giving rides to others; they’re ordinary car owners who were already planning to drive somewhere and agree to take others along. The Paris regional transport authority subsidizes BlaBlaLines to encourage carpooling, so passengers ride free.
Lachevre, who also typically takes public transportation to work, downloaded the app when the strike began. He has picked up commuters on his way to and from work ever since.
“Why not help other people out?” he said. “I still have two, three, four places in my car that could permit other people to go to work without complications.”
Inching forward on a congested highway, Msoili and Lachevre exchanged views on the strike and the proposed retirement plan.
The overhaul, which the government will unveil Wednesday, aims to unify France’s 42 pension plans into one. Macron sees it as essential to his quest to transform the French economy. Unions fear it will force people to work longer for smaller pensions, though the government says it won’t raise the retirement age of 62.
Msoili sympathizes with the transportation workers. But she has begun to take issue with the strikers’ tactics.
“It’s people like us who are struggling as a result,” she said.
Lachevre, whose cousin is a train conductor, said he understands the transport unions’ position but thinks the proposed reforms will make the system fairer.