Enhancing transport environments

The RATP group is investing and making commitments to better cater to passengers with reduced mobility or with sensory handicaps. It is installing lifts and escalators in the new stations of its underground networks and is renovating old networks wherever possible. On the surface network, its teams are working together with road maintenance services to make its buses and coaches accessible to people in wheelchairs. Its experts are providing more solutions for the visually- and hearing-impaired, with sound and visual public address systems, automatic ticket machines with voice synthesis and a Bluetooth dynamic guidance system. The Group subsidiary Flexcité is dedicated to transporting people with reduced mobility.

Design is in RATP's genes. The famous metro entrances designed by Guimard in 1900, the 1930s buses with their open-air deck at the back, the stations of automatic line 14, the new T3 tramline and the MF01 metro series, winner of the Design of the Year Prize awarded by Railways Interiors, all illustrate RATP’s design expertise. This quality design integrates mobility into the urban landscape, is easy on the eye and on the hearing, while conveying a message to passengers and sporting the identity of the brand. RATP experts ensure consistency over time. They intervene upstream of projects, working closely with engineers and suppliers, fostering the tight networking of art and engineering. This expertise draws its strength and legitimacy from its cross-modal approach, serving every means of public transport (metro, RER, buses, and tramways) and the different professions (operations, engineering, maintenance, sales, etc.).

A vending machine that no longer delivers tickets, an escalator that stops, a screen that goes blank – now accustomed to these services, passengers often resent doing without. Fully aware of this, RATP has invested in solutions based on the most advanced technologies. Its latest multi-station surveillance centre can monitor in real time more than 4,200 pieces of equipment in 29 stations of RER A in Île-de-France. Escalators, lifts, intercoms, alarms, video-surveillance cameras, and ticket vending machines – the slightest incident immediately triggers a warning. An operator can see the location where a problem occurs, remotely startup the faulty system, or send a team to fix it.

Our maintenance workshops and bus depots are often located in very dense urban areas. Particular attention is paid to the quality of the urban integration of any new construction or renovation project. The elected officials and local residents are brought in to each RATP project beforehand, an occasion where the architects can have their say. Four of RATP's architectural projects were selected in this way for the Venice International Architecture Exhibition in late 2008. This selection pays tribute to the quality of the Group's project engineering and architectural policy.

Jazz, world music, rock’ n’ roll, or classical music… For many years the Paris metro has been a huge musical stage where the musicians you see in the corridors are the mirror image of passengers – every style and every nation is represented. They liven up the humdrum of passengers' daily routines. RATP and its partners grouped together in the Espace Métro Accords hold auditions and accredit 300 applicants. Art also abounds in the metro: the Louvre-Rivoli platforms are like the antechambers of the world-famous museum, and artists and designers have turned other stations into wondrous spaces over the years.