Public transport development and equal access for all to urban amenities?

The social dimension of urban transport policies becomes a paramount issue of the public action. This may result from the observed growth of social inequalities, and the persistence or even the worsening of segregation processes. In particular, this issue leads to questions about the access to activities and services that individuals need everyday. It also relates to the characterization of an equal access for all to the city.In this context, the aim of the paper is to validate, by the measure in the case of the Lyons conurbation, the existence of urban accessibility disparities between the richest and the deprived territories residents, by accounting for the private car and the public transport. We show that there are equal accesses to amenities by car, but the travel modes unequal access implies inequities in accessing urban activities. Then, our paper analyses the social impacts of the public transport policy contents aiming at reducing the urban accessibility disparities or the gaps to the "standard society". The assessment made, based on the interpretation of the Lyons Urban Travel Plan, accounts for concrete answers of the access to amenities improvement for everyone, and in particular for the underprivileged populations. Nevertheless, these answers prove to be limited. A public transport policy cannot claim to reduce the unequal access between territories and to fight against the exclusion of a minority of the population, without accounting for the local and overall contexts of urban morphology, without being in line with regional planning policies – in particular the activities location control policies.