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After being abandoned in the early 20th century, trams took on a new lease of life in the late 1970s, once again considered essential by elected officials and transport professionals alike. Their arrival prompted the creation of cycle paths and shared environments, road rehabilitation, greening, etc. As a general catalyst for significant urban requalification, they helped transform the landscape, improving the local populations’ everyday lives. There are now more than 28 tram networks operating in France, along with several projects under consideration. Trams are sustainable and work well as part of inter-modal systems, in harmony with ground traffic, not to mention their regularity and capacity advantages. All this makes them popular with passengers. They allow cities to better meet their inhabitants’ needs by facilitating travel between increasingly denser urban areas.
Over the last 25 years, RATP Group has built one of the world’s most efficient tram networks in the Île-de-France region. This know-how now extends throughout France – with Valenciennes, and soon Angers – and on an international level: Algiers, Oran, Constantine, Casablanca, Washington D.C., Tucson, Hong Kong, Florence, etc. RATP Group teams support transport authorities through all stages in their projects, from network structuring to commissioning, operation and maintenance. This cross-cutting expertise is unparalleled anywhere in the world, ensuring that local area needs are optimally met. Trams are leveraged as genuine urban development tools, drawing on their efficiency, service, effect on quality of life, and aesthetics for positive effects on local residents.
RATP Group is convinced that trams are a transport mode for the future, and is now designing and rolling out trials in partnership with communities, industrial players and start-ups to support their sustainable development. This approach focuses on deploying technical innovations, such as the first autonomous garage trial, along with new passenger services. These include an application to promote safe route-sharing by pedestrians and trams, currently being tested in the Val-de-Marne department. It cuts smartphone sounds to warn users when a tram is about to arrive.
Trams are an efficient transport mode, responding to exponential increases in mobility needs. RATP-run services, which prioritise service quality and passenger satisfaction, are particularly popular, since they combine the advantages of bus and underground networks: close proximity, coupled with flow density management. RATP sees trams as an important lever for urban reconstruction and development, as well as improving quality of life. The accessibility, agility and peace of mind they offer help make city life easier.
RATP sees trams as an important lever for urban reconstruction and development, as well as improving quality of life.
Trams’ ability to combine capacity with reliability at a much lower cost than heavy rail makes them a solution much suited to urban travel needs. Moreover, unlike trains, which often require complicated multi-branch operating patterns, tram lines have been designed recently to operate linearly from one terminal to the next, for a smooth-running network. This is a safe transport mode, with proven operating processes and a good performance record.
No wonder, then, that local elected officials see trams as powerful weapons in their urban planning arsenal. They contribute to urban renovation and reconstruction, bringing real estate and commercial business back to areas that might have been deprived of them. Their interest goes beyond transport considerations alone. These elected representatives have thus shaped the “French-style tram” system, almost always combining modern trams running on completely new lines with urban redevelopment, strengthening the city-transport interface.
The tram’s comeback in the 1990s marked an important turning point for RATP Group. Our unique expertise, across all business areas associated with this transport mode, allows us to successfully design and operate vastly different networks.
The first section of Washington’s DC Streetcar Line transports 3,000 passengers a day. In Paris, one of the densest networks in the world, the T3 carries over 433,000 passengers a day.
The arrival of a tram line is synonymous with significant improvements in the public environment around it. Roads often monopolised by cars are reconfigured to favour public transport and active modes: wider pavements, adaptations for cycling and better pedestrian crossings. These areas are enhanced as abandoned land is reclaimed and more efficient ground coverings installed, along with new urban furniture and tree alignments. These routes can also be planted with greenery, as is the case for T1 in Courtilles, T2 in Bezons and T3 in Paris.
Trams are thus valuable catalysts for development projects that profoundly transform their surrounding areas. The development potential of Châtillon-Viroflay’s T6 has been broadly anticipated to enable optimal urban planning and transport structuring, as the area welcomes new housing, jobs and services.
