RATP Group, doing its part for the city
RATP Group’s urban services are a natural extension of our core business and our purpose: working every day to improve the quality of urban life and make cities more sustainable, inclusive, and enjoyable places to live.
Our integrator capability, spanning transport, energy, telecommunications, digital technology, and property, underpins our ambition to be a leading partner for sustainable cities, supporting the ecological transition, territorial cohesion, and quality of urban life.
Our challenges
Unlocking the potential of cities’ resources
From beneath the streets and inside tunnels to rooftops and ventilation shafts, the city generates abundant resources that remain largely untapped. Drawing on its expertise in networks and underground infrastructure, RATP Group is developing the capabilities needed to harness these resources and put them to productive use.
Promoting a sustainable, diverse, and liveable city
RATP Group has built up distinctive property and urban development expertise over the decades. By bringing together transport, housing, facilities, and public spaces on its industrial sites, the Group is reimagining how the city is used, helping to make it more sustainable and diverse, while improving quality of life for its residents.Making the most of cities’ assets
RATP Group derives value from its infrastructure beyond transport. Fibre-optic networks, electrical substations, high-footfall spaces, and land assets all offer opportunities for additional uses. For each of these assets, the Group develops complementary uses by drawing on its broad range of expertise and capacity for innovation. In doing so, it creates high-quality urban services for local authorities and their residents.
Our projects
Heating through the metro
Every time a train brakes, an engine runs, or a passenger travels, heat is released into the tunnels. RATP is seeking to recover waste heat generated by its activities, particularly within the metro network. Of the 326 ventilation shafts operated by RATP in Paris, some could provide between 100 and 150 kW of thermal capacity, with each shaft potentially providing enough heat for around 35 to 50 homes.
This is the purpose of the demonstrator currently being deployed in Pantin, which will supply heat to a RATP Habitat residential building. This full-scale experiment is the first step towards a solution that, if successful, could be deployed on a larger scale.
Water resource management
Every year, almost 10 million cubic metres of water are collected across RATP’s underground network through nearly 300 pumping stations, much of it from groundwater seepage and rising groundwater levels. The Group is therefore exploring ways to make better use of this resource. Within RATP’s own operations, for example, this water is used to clean rolling stock and supply toilet facilities. At Balard, drainage water is already fed into the City of Paris non-potable water network, and a new injection point is currently under consideration. RATP is also working with local authorities in the inner suburbs to explore how this water could be reused for street cleaning and maintaining green spaces.
The largest dark-fibre network in Île-de-France
RATP Connect operates the largest dark-fibre network in Île-de-France, with 170,000 kilometres deployed underground and 2,700 kilometres in the railway environment, serving more than 300 customers, including telecoms operators, businesses, healthcare and educational institutions, and local authorities. The added value of this service lies in its unique nature: a fibre network deployed alongside metro and RER lines, which is protected, redundant, and backed by a long-established operator. With the Grand Paris Express, this expertise is moving to a new scale. Connect Grand Paris is extending the historic network along 200 kilometres of new lines while adding a new component: local hosting. In each of the 65 new stations, technical rooms will serve as local data centres, as close as possible to users.
"When we have a station roof available, we look at installing solar panels on it. When our tunnels generate heat, we look at how we can recover it. When groundwater accumulates in our underground spaces, we explore ways of reusing it. The principle is always the same: maximising the use of our assets beyond their primary function."
Rémy Foret
Director of Innovation, Digital, and Sustainable Development, RATP Infrastructures
Our expertises
Resource Reuse
Water, cooling, heating and waste heat: the RATP Group is working to capture and harness these many sources of energy.
Real Estate Development
For more than 30 years, the RATP Group has pursued an ambitious and innovative real estate strategy.
Unlocking the Value of Urban Assets
The RATP Group creates value from its infrastructure beyond transport, developing high-quality urban services for local authorities and their residents.
