Transport Information Group

A short brief about the free-access bikes made available by Paris City, in collaboration with JCDecaux advertising company.

Velib’ will celebrate next week its first anniversary and results seem to be far beyond expectations.

Every day, an average 110-120,000 bikes are rented, to ride an average 18 minutes, and Velib’ just past the 26 millionth rental.

As of today, the French capital city has 16,000 bikes available, in 1,200 stations. By the end of the summer, 20,600 bikes will be available and 1,451 stations will be in service. One negative point however, in one year, 3,000 bikes have been stolen and 3,000 more have been destructed… almost perfect!

References from the Transport Information Group

Here are related articles from the Transport Information Group, published in the last couple months.

• In brief: Paris Metro subscribers will all go “Navigo”, January 14, 2008
• London: lower and lower emissions areas to come, February 13, 2008
• In brief: Paris have a dream… car-sharing, January 29, 2008

There is a way to finance infrastructure when the National Government does not have enough money… simply rely on the Local and Regional Governments!

A future high-speed rail line extension is planned from Paris toward the west side of France, also known as Brittany, Bretagne in French. As of today, on a regular map of France, Brest, in Brittany, is around 600 kilometres or at least 6 hours driving or 4 to 5 hours by train from Paris. The new high-speed rail link would totally change our country’s map, as it did for the rest of France: Brest would then be at 3 hours from Paris by TGV (see below for project references) and not anymore “that far away”, as represented on the map hereunder. Note that this map was build taking into account the travel time from Paris to the different cities by TGV (French high-speed train operated by SNCF).

Modified map of France depending on TGV time travel from Paris

Source: La Tribune

Financing the project

First things first… Before seeing Brest at a reasonable distance from Paris on the previous map, it is needed to find enough budget to finance the project. After several months and multiple discussions between all Brittany’s local Government officials, they decided unanimously that they would be part of the financing team for this project, bringing €1.1 billion into the Bretagne Grande Vitesse (BGV) project (High-Speed Brittany). (more…)

Near Field Communication or NFC is a technology that has a great potential when associated with cellphones… In Asia, many transit systems adopted this technology and implemented it to ease the access to services related to transit trips, and mostly to intermodal transit trips. The last European Congress on Mobility, held early June in Paris, addressed this issue in an important debate.

French transit authorities (Autorités Organisatrices de Transport, AOT) could benefit from the development of such a technology, that could drastically improve ratemaking and ticketing, but also travelers information (for multimodal trips for example).

Groupe Ulysse: gathering phone operators and transit authorities to develop NFC technology

Both the French cellphone & network operators and transit authorities created “Groupe Ulysse” and are working on the technical and organisational standards to implement and deploy ticketing technology through NFC-capable cellphones. (more…)

Paris launch a waterways transit service

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë and Jean-Paul Huchon, President of Paris-Ile de France regional Government innaugurated the new waterways transit service Voguéo on Saturday, June 28, 2008.

Operated by RATP, this new service will link Maisons-Alfort in the Val-de-Marne Département to Austerlitz train station inside Paris city (for more details, please see the map attached).

Voguéo Route

Source: MétroPole, RATP. (more…)

Despite the good results of experimentations nothing happened since 2004…

In 2004, a first attempt of automatic minibus implementation was tested in Antibes (South of France). This was part of a research project called Cybermove (see website in the References below), which has analysed in details 11 sites in Europe. The purpose of Antibes demonstration was to show the people the general operation and functionality of the ParkShuttle system (using Frog vehicles: see the pictures on Cybercars website here). ParkShuttle was controlled automatically, and the required destination was selected by pushing on a control panel, in the vehicle.

Experimentation details

During a 10-days testing period, the shuttle took around 3,000 persons on a 320-metre long section, in front of the Vauban port. The hybrid shuttle, with a 20-passenger capacity, was guided by magnets implanted in the road. The obstacle detection was assured by a laser beam with a 30 metres outreach. The shuttle had 5 stops on its route and rode at 15 kph (around 10 mph), 9 hours a day.

Experimentation results

On the technical side, this experimentation was a success: very good reliability, easy set-up (the magnets were installed in only one night!), the control system never failed, the comfort was better than a mechanically guided system, and the obstacle detection has been a great success… despite the fact that pedestrians tried to burst in front of the shuttle at the last second.

The public considered the service was reliable, easy to use, and that is had good performances, was comfortable, noiseless, and “eco-aware”. (more…)

Transport Expertise today released its first study “L’offre française dans la mobilité urbaine“ (French Offer in Urban Mobility). Published in French, a partial version is available here, and the full version may be sent to your email address upon demand through the website’s contact form.

What’s in?

This paper gathers facts and figures from 24 major companies offering urban transport services:

• consulting and engineering firms (Systra, Egis Rail, Egis Bceom International, SNCF International, Groupe SCE);
• railcars and buses manufacturers (Alstom Transport, Groupe Lohr, Irisbus – Iveco and Heuliez Bus – Iveco);
• rail industry (Faiveley Transport, Vossloh – Cogifer, Valdunes Entreprises, Colas – Seco Rail);
• signaling systems manufacturers (Alstom Signaling Solutions, Vossloh – Cogifer);
• transport operators (Veolia Transport – Veolia Environnement, Transdev/Société Européenne pour le Développement des Transports Publics, Keolis, Optile, SNCF/SNCF Participations, RATP Développement),
• ITS suppliers (Thalès Group, Grenobloise d’Electronique et d’Automatismes, Martec); and
• street furnitures suppliers (JCDecaux Mobilier Urbain, CycloCity – JCDecaux).

An English version will be prepared in the near future. Please let us know if you might be interested so that we could launch the production once we are sure enough people will use it.