In 2014, alongside Ile-de-France Mobilités, RATP committed to a major technological and ecological evolution with the aim of having a 100% ecological bus fleet by 2025: this is the Bus2025 plan. This is in line with the 20% reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions included in the Ile-de-France Urban Travel Plan.

With Bus2025, RATP will profoundly transform its industrial tool (bus centers) and completely renew its fleet. A transition that has already begun with the first acquisitions of electric buses and massive acquisitions of hybrids.

London transport authority, TfL, has awarded £500,000 funding (approx. €565,000) to develop new ideas from transport operators across London in order to reduce the number of people seriously injured or killed on London's bus network.

A burgeoning year 

Seven additional cities joined EXTRAPOLITAN in 2017 after Hong Kong, Nice and Marseilles in 2016. In July, Touristry AB, a major player in the Scandinavian travel industry operating under the brand Red Buses, joined Extrapolitan with the cities of Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Riga and Tallinn. Last October, Athens became our first partner from southern Europe with Sights of Athens. 

Boosting innovation 

Sizanani means “let’s help each other” in Sotho. For the last ten years the charity has been supporting students from under-privileged backgrounds in the Alexandra township in Johannesburg, close to the Gautrain line, the high-speed regional train service operated by RATP Dev subsidiary BOC.  

Each year, the International Economic Forum of the Americas brings together personalities from political and business worlds to think about major economic issues and develop strategic partnerships between Canadian and international actors.

At the eleventh version of the forum in Toronto, RATP Dev presented its vision of transport infrastructures in an increasingly interconnected world.

Extrapolitan alliance member Open Tour Paris has teamed up with the manufacturer UNVI to design the first 100%-electric, double-decker, open-topped bus. As a first for the market, the 12-metre vehicle can carry up to 75 passengers. Its range of 150 km per day means it can make up to 250 stops to enable passengers to hop on and off as they please. The entire Open Tour Paris fleet, comprising 40 vehicles, will be converted to electricity by 2024. 

The CTRL network caters to over 200,000 inhabitants of the 25 municipalities in the Lorient conurbation. It has 34 regular urban bus lines, 11 inter-urban lines, four maritime lines including the Ar Vag Tredan boat – the world’s first ferry to be 100% electrically-powered by ultra-capacitors – 126 school bus lines, ten ToD lines and a transport service for reduced-mobility passengers. The network will also have 21 event-based lines during the Festival Interceltique de Lorient. 

Open Tour Paris has taken a page from national colours and symbols to decorate its 40-strong fleet of vehicles. The first bus sporting the new livery will be on the road starting on 20 October along Open Tour Paris lines. All buses will be progressively redecorated until March 2018.

RNTP brings together all the French public transport and mobility parties together every two years to share leading experiments in regions, compare points of view and find out about the latest mobility innovations. This year’s event took in Marseilles, south of France, a city committed as part of the Aix-Marseille-Provence conurbation to a project of improving and developing large-scale transport services.