Full-height fare gates to curb down fare evasion in Rennes, France
The new gates cost €7m and should save Rennes metro €15m over the next 15 years

Station Charles de Gaulle at Métro de Rennes © Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

The city of Rennes, France, will soon be giving away its status as the last city in the country to use an open system for ticketing at the Metro. In a bid to curb down fare evasion, authorities are installing full-height fare gates at all current 16 stations on the city’s STAR network. Fare...

Paris cuts public transport service to tackle Covid-19 spread
Frequency and operating hours are reduced and some stations closed as people are urged not to travel except for essential needs

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Paris transport operator RATP and national rail group SNCF have implemented a number of service reductions in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. Since last week, RATP’s fleet of bus, tram and metro vehicles operate at 30-60% of normal capacity. The company says this is enough to reflect the falling demand but still ensure social...

SNCF upgrades to full-height access gates to reduce fare evasion
Under the new plan, 140 new gates at 34 stations will be installed at a total cost of 55 million euros

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In July 2019 the Parisian station of Saint-Lazare has been the first one to receive the upgrades. According to the press release issued by SNCF, the cost raised to 14 million euros for this station, out of 55 million euros invested in total to replace 1.800 old access gates at 34 stations on its...

Study concludes free public transport in Lyon, France unsustainable
Lyon's transit network is significantly larger than that of cities like Dunkirk where public transport is free

Subway station in Lyon

A recent study commissioned by France’s second largest public transport operator SYTRAL has concluded that switching to a ticket-free scheme on Lyon’s TCL network would be financially unsustainable and would jeopardise the development of the network on the long-term.  According to the press release issued by SYTRAL, free service would reduce certain operating expenses such...

Buying tickets onboard costs 150,000 hours yearly in Paris
The city will launch a new bus network on April 20th to improve bus regularity and increase speed

Buying tickets onboard costs time

Buying tickets onboard implies a serious waste of time. Paris bus journeys lose 150,000 hours every year to drivers selling transport tickets. Consequently, Ile-de-France Mobilités has launched a three-week campaign to encourage travellers to buy their ticket before taking the bus.  The aim is to save time and money, as well as facilitating bus...

SNCF intensifies its anti-fraud strategy
The French operator will deploy mobile teams of 2 to 8 agents at trains and stations in Occitanie to reduce its 11% fare evasion rate

Anti-fraud strategy reinforce at SNCF

Fare evasion rate in SNCF Occitanie trains is 11%. This amounts to an annual loss of 8 million euros, equivalent to a TER of last generation. In order to tackle this issue, the French operator will reinforce its anti-fraud strategy. Starting December 9th,  SNCF will set up a new customer service organization at stations...

SNCF installs automatic validation gates in Nice
The deployment is part of the operator’s scheme to reduce fare evasion and improve travellers’ safety

SNCF installs automatic validation gates

French operator SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français) has installed automatic validation gates in Nice. These doors, which lead to the platforms, replace the fixed security gates. Now the gates only open when commuters present a valid ticket. This can be original, on the phone or printed on paper–. The change is part...

Fare gates to fight fraud in public transport in Lille
Lille (France) plans to have fare gates installed in its sixty metro stations by 2020 to reduce fare evasion

Fare gates in Barcelona subway

November last year, Lille’s metro (France) installed fare gates in one of its stations. Four months later, results were very positive. Ticket validation has risen sharply -up to more than 16%-, meaning 700 additional validations on average per day. In 2013, the public transport operator for the Lille Métropole, Transpole, registered a 18.4% fraud...

Paris considers offering free public transport
A toll might be implemented at the city entrance to compensate the 3 billion revenue loss

Paris considers offering free public transport

Two months ago, the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, announced the launch of a study mission on the possibility of free public transport in Ile-de-France. Around twenty French municipalities, such as Niort (Deux-Sèvres), Compiègne (Oise) or Aubagne (Bouches-du-Rhône), have removed the pricing of its public transport. The measure is also running in Tallinn since...