1The issue of company cars leads to intense political and social debates. The phenomenon of company cars varies greatly from one company to another. Beyond the definition of a company which uses company cars, this fact sheet underlines the variability of the profiles of these companies with the objective to clarify the debates and provide food for thought on a targeted mobility policy.
- 1 In 2004, BCR introduced the legal framework which requires certain companies (initially, all sites (...)
- 2 The information on company cars will, however, be included in the federal diagnosis as of the 2017 (...)
2Data on company cars at company level are scarce in Belgium. Apart from the surveys conducted on the initiative of the Belspo PROMOCO project team in 2007 and 2008 [Cornelis et al, 2009], only the company travel plans (CTP) for the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR) provide data on the number of company vehicles (and in particular, company cars), the characteristics of companies (specific location, sector of activity, size, work organisation, etc.) and the travel practices of workers. The last available CTP sample was gathered throughout 2014 by Bruxelles Environnement.1 The following analysis is based on this. At federal level, the diagnosis of travel between home and work produces a similar schema for the entire Belgian territory, but until now has not gathered information on company vehicle fleets.2
3Apart from the fact that the CTP sample only concerns company sites located in BCR, it only targets companies with more than 100 workers and, among them, only sites with more than 100 workers. This leads to an under-representation of employed workers and self-employed workers. Furthermore, only workers who spend at least half of their working time on the site being considered are counted, which tends to reduce the significance of certain sectors of activity (construction, cleaning, etc.).
- 3 Certain companies simply did not respond and certain responses could not be used, as they were too (...)
4In 2014, the workers in the companies concerned by the CTP obligation represented 43 % of employed workers in BCR. The useable sample included 497 sites for just over 263 000 workers, i.e. 38 % of employed workers in BCR [Bruxelles Environnement, 2016].3
5There are just over 30 000 company cars in the CTP 2014 sample, i.e. 11,5 vehicles for 100 workers or 19,2 vehicles for 100 workers if we consider companies which provide at least one company vehicle to their workers. These average values must not, however, conceal the significant variability within the sample, as 42,3 % of sites (39,4 % of workers) do not provide cars to their workers, whereas at the other extreme, only 3 % of sites provide at least 75 company cars for 100 workers.
6In the choice of a sub-sample of companies which use company cars, we feel that it is important to exclude the companies for which the number of company cars per worker is very low, and for which the use of company cars may not be considered as a structuring practice as regards the mobility of workers at company level. We propose to set the threshold at companies with at least 10 company cars for 100 workers.
7The resulting sub-sample includes 148 sites (29,8 % of the total sample and 51,6 % of companies with at least one company car), 74 734 workers (28,4 % of the total sample and 46,8 % of workers in companies with at least one company car) and 27 756 company cars, i.e. 90,5 % of the total number of company cars in the sample. This threshold allows us to preserve a significant diversity in the intensity of use of company cars, and to exclude the companies which use them only rarely. The result is that almost all public sector sites are not included in our sample.
Table 1. Company sites, workers and company cars according to the number of company cars for 100 workers in the CTP 2014 sample
8In addition to the number of company cars for 100 workers, we have integrated different variables which characterise each of the sites, with the aim of producing a profile of companies which associate several dimensions. These variables are related to the characteristics specific to each company (sector of activity, size of the company), the spatial characteristics of each site (location, accessibility by public transport) and the workers (distance between home and work, place of residence), as well as the daily travel practices of the latter (method of travel from home to work).
- 4 We have grouped the sites according to an ascending classification using the Ward method for the fo (...)
9Thanks to an ascending classification using the Ward method, we have divided the sample into three company profiles which group the sites with characteristics which are as similar as possible with respect to the different variables mentioned in the previous paragraph.4
Table 2. Sites, workers and company cars for each type of company and for companies which do not use company cars
10The first type includes 72 sites and close to 25 000 workers with a total of 13 427 company cars, i.e. 54,2 company cars for 100 workers. This high and significantly over-represented value with respect to the average, as well as the considerable number of parking spaces for 100 workers (71,0) and the significant modal share of cars among workers (79,1 % of them use cars, not including car sharing) paint the picture of a company with a very high rate of use of cars in general and of company cars in particular.
- 5 The definition of the spatial division used in the framework of this analysis is presented in the a (...)
- 6 The accessibility indicator used in this analysis is based on a construction between two indicators (...)
11While the average distance between home and the workplace (23,3 km) appears to be lower than that of the total sample, in particular due to the place of residence which is slightly over-represented in BCR and in the inner ring,5 the accessibility of sites by public transport (PT)6 is poor overall (poor for 81,6 % of workers, excellent for none). This aspect clearly contributes to a mobility profile which is focused on cars among companies of this type. Likewise, it is not surprising that most of the company cars for this type of company are found in the outer ring, with a very high concentration in the northeastern part, related to the presence of several business parks near the national airport.
12The vast majority of companies of this first type belong to the service company sector (62,5 %) and are smaller than average (344 workers per site and less than 10 % of workers employed at sites with more than 2 000 workers).
13The second type, led mainly by the banking and insurance sector (64,5 % of workers), concerns close to 40 000 workers at 41 sites. Unlike the first type, it includes very large companies (66,1 % of workers are employed in units with more than 2 000 workers) with a very central location in BCR. This results in particularly easy access by public transport (the accessibility of sites is excellent for 58,2 % of workers) to the benefit of workers who tend to live far from their workplace (32,4 km on average), in areas more specifically located in the outer ring or in the rest of Belgium (65,9 % of workers).
14In these conditions, the use of the train prevails over the other modes of transport (49,4 % of workers), despite the substantial proportion of car users (32,2 %). This mobility profile which is less marked by the use of the car is confirmed by an under-represented number of company cars for 100 workers (28,5) and parking spaces for 100 workers (30,9) with respect to the average.
15The third type, which includes a significantly lower number of sites (35) and workers (10 414) compared with the first two types, concerns smaller units (298 workers per site on average and no site with more than 2 000 workers) characterised by more local recruitment (38,2 % of workers live in BCR) and fairly good access to the workplace by public transport (the accessibility by public transport is good for 51,7 % of workers). The profile per sector of activity is similar to the average for companies which use company cars, and an overrepresentation is seen especially for sectors with minimal presence in the previous two types, i.e. the media (6,7 % of workers), the rest of the non-market sector (6,7 % of workers) and industry (4,7 % of workers).
16This last type has a limited number of company cars and parking spaces per worker (29,3 and 35,0 respectively for 100 workers) and a significant but slightly under-represented use of cars for travel between home and work (38,0 % of workers). While these characteristics are clearly similar to those of the second type, the third type stands out due to a specificity in the use of STIB (25,5 % of workers) which may be viewed in connection with more recruitment from Brussels on average.
17The companies which do not use company cars present a profile similar to the third type due to their high level of local recruitment (37,6 % of workers live in BCR) and a high level of use of public transport (58,3 % of workers use the train or the services of STIB, De Lijn or TEC). However, they differ clearly from companies which use company cars in general (and companies of the third type in particular) due to a structure based on sectors of activity which are largely dominated by public administrations (56,6 %), health (15,6 %) and education (6,6 %). The significance of federal administrations and federated entities among companies which do not use company cars explains why they are so accessible by public transport (accessibility by public transport is excellent for 43,1 % of workers) and are large on average (545 workers per site on average).
18The analysis carried out for this fact sheet has highlighted the fact that the intensity of use of company cars is associated and correlated with other factors in the framework of the elaboration of company profiles. Specifically, along with the provision of parking spaces and poor accessibility by public transport, the provision of company cars contributes to creating mobility profiles at company level which are mainly focused on the use of cars for travel between home and work.
Figure 1. Values and specificities of descriptive variables of the companies which use company cars according to type, and for all companies which do not use company cars
Figure 2. Company cars located in the neighbourhood of the workplace according to the type of company which uses company cars and all companies which do not use company cars
