XQUISIT project

Today, as we are entering a digital era and facing new challenges (financial issue, energy savings for metropolis, sustainability, employment, social interaction, Internet/mobile phone shifts), public transport has to be innovative (financial issue, new way of working, ...) even if the general trend is favourable (sustainability).

New tools and new methods for creating values are invented and the design of mobility systems can be improved thanks to the observation of new business models and new actors of mobility.

Those dynamics are turning transport into mobility (a time to live, to work, to interact, etc.) and the mobility systems into tools for business development, for cultural/educational issues, for social expectancies, for urban strategies, etc.

4 areas have been identified :

   - New services for customers inspired by the area of Internet and mobile phones

   - The improvement of transport hubs

The history of Public Transport Networks shows that the trajectory of evolution of such networks has been spurred by a technical view of mobility (“transport”).

This led most transport network designers to improve the technical efficiency of heavy networks (speed/capacity) and reduce one important piece of the network, the hubs/stations, to a functional equipment dedicated to intermodality. The last 20 years showed that the hubs have become an urban phenomenon, on which urban strategies can be built up, and responding to many challenges like financing, social interaction, services, architecture, ecocities...

   - Sustainability

   - Business models for infrastructures

XQUISIT came out of a specific investigation about new business models and infrastructures.

Today, cities are facing many challenges: congestion, low financing capacity for infrastructure, booming of energy needs, sustainability, employment, information shifting mobility practices, new social expectancies etc. When an important project such as a metro is at stake, it is helpful to try to rethink it so that it can bring new responses to those new challenges over the transport issue. But this requires early sharing workshop with actor that are at the very center of economics, sustainability, web and mobile phone area, energy sector etc. so that a transport project could widen its span to those new questions (and contribute to solve them through its numerous properties such as flow, informative potential, social interaction, hubs and network covering a large territory, etc.)

XQUISIT is a method made up to increase the value of a metro network through early structured partnerships with many companies and public services coming from different fields (sustainability, energy, employment, technology, ...). XQUISIT structured the dialogue between RATP and those partners by a specifically designed process.

How to design a metro so that it can spur the creation of value and employment? How can it help the clusterisation of territories? How can the metro help the cities to become greener? How to help cities to face the energy challenges (optimisation, energy savings) taking into account that mobility is said to require more and more electricity (cars, buses, etc.)? How to boost the creation of services dedicated to the specific needs of today’s citizen (daily organisation))?

The general purpose is to help over companies to create value by "plugging" their activities to our properties: space, staff, opening hour range, data, warmth, electricity network, flow and crowd, 365 hubs throughout the urban area, etc.

This open innovation program is a way to boost the "innovation by others", the production of innovative services designed with others and producing services that help the metropolis to face the challenges beside the mobility booming demand.

XQUISIT produced innovative concepts and projects on 4 areas:

   - Energy

   - Sustainability

   - Services for the citizens of the 21st century

   - Urban media and the potential of information technologies for mobility operators

XQUISIT defined highly-valued mobility offers that considerably widen the general value of a public transport network for today's metropolis.

Contact : Stéphane Cobo - Research & Innovation Program M21 Manager - RATP Tél : +33 (1) 5878 2433 / +33 (6) 1695 6967