Open Tour Paris has joined with the bus manufacturer UNVI to design the first NGV double-decker, open-top vehicle. This 12-metre vehicle, which is completely new on the market, can carry around 70 passengers. It has a daily operating range of 500 km, allowing it to make 250 stops in order for passengers to get on and off as they wish. By 2024, the entire Open Tour Paris fleet, made up of 36 vehicles, will be converted to clean energy sources.
Working alongside the City of Paris and ADEME for a more sustainable mobility over the past several years, Open Tour Paris is proud to be a leader with nearly 1/3 of its bus fleet converted to clean energy sources. Today, we are proud to be able to combine tourist attractiveness with environmental compliance by offering our customers an innovative and sustainable service.
This innovation is part of RATP Group’s commitment to a major technological and ecological development, of which the goal is to convert 100% of its fleet in Île-de-France by 2025. Through this ambitious plan, the aim is to have 2/3 electric bus depots and 1/3 biogas bus depots by 2025, with a 100% eco-friendly fleet. This will make Paris and the Île-de-France region a global reference for very low-carbon urban road public transport.
The Group already operates around 1,200 hybrid buses, 100 electric buses and 150 NGV buses in several cities across France and abroad. In 2018, two lines in London were completely converted to electricity.
RATP Group and sightseeing buses
RATP Dev, an RATP Group subsidiary, is one of the few global public transport operators to have expertise and experience in urban double-decker sightseeing buses. In 2015, RATP Dev created Extrapolitan, a global alliance aiming to bring together the industry’s best operators. Since then, RATP Group, the 5th global player in public transport, has provided these operators with its expertise.
Extrapolitan is currently present in 21 cities globally: Paris, London, Hong Kong, Porto, Lisbon, Budapest, Split, Nice, Marseille, Monaco, Rome, Athens, Berlin, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Riga, Tallinn, Stockholm, Bath, Windsor and Cardiff.
The Extrapolitan alliance is planning for the deployment of 100% electric double-decker buses on several of its networks starting with The Original Tour, in London, which has been operating its first electric double-decker open-top bus since October 2018.