If the teleworking taxes imposed on employees of companies allows a drop in affluence in public transport, the district traders, they are worried about this new stop.
by Pierre Angrand-Benabdallah
For the Government’s decision to make teleworking required at least three days a week had a good: it was not difficult to find a place in the RSP rowing on this week. “Normally, we are often forced to stand up, stuck to each other. But, this week, I have no problem to sit”, tells Claire Blachon, project manager at Suez, who goes down to the Defense.
In one of the busiest stations of the RATP network, which usually sees close to nearly 250,000 passengers a day, the usual clouds with escalators have disappeared. “There are much less people. At the beginning of the week of users have even come to suspend their subscription,” says Pires Armando, RATP agent.
Since January 3, the first business district in Europe, which brings together 180,000 employees, is strangely calm. In the morning, a few dozen executives cross the immense esplanade, which usually gripping people. To Société Générale, for example, the 18,000 employees who work in the neighborhood come only one day a week.
In the one hundred and twenty-five buildings that encircle the esplanade, many offices are lit, few are busy: “There is no one, explains a concierge provider of the CBX Tower that wants to remain anonymous. A Two hundred employees were present on Monday, against three thousand normal times. “
” It’s very complicated “
Obviously, the sixty cafes, restaurants and bars of defense suffer. “Yesterday we served twenty-five covered, before we made it two hundred. All the restorators of the neighborhood are worried,” says Franky Bouiller, boss of the restaurant Le Mond, going to serve the only two people horn in the room.
At the end of the day, at the time of the exit of the offices, the shops of the shops of the Westfield shopping center the 4 stages, the most visited of France, wait in vain the arrival of the customers. All traders surveyed tell a sharp drop in the influx. “We lost the clientele of the towers, it is very complicated,” explains François Luu, head of the sign The Kooples, who accused a fall of more than 50% of his turnover for the day of January 4th. Same in the Bexley costume shop.
This start of difficult year intervenes while the affluence is in the ultimate since the beginning of the pandemic. At the 4 stroke, the stores surveyed by the Federation for the promotion of specialized trade have been a drop in attendance by 40% since 2019. “We are worried, it’s going to be impossible to survive if it continues like that,” says a leader of the JULY Shop. Even bell his bell at Cultura. “We had resumed hope with a super-month of December at the same level as 2019. This new stop is tough,” David Rousselle, director of the store.