What will change in public transport in 2023?
Navigo price increasequestions about the oopening of the bus network to competitioncalls for a strike in shambles, lack of bus drivers and subway drivers… Public transport in Ile-de-France certainly did not have its best year. What does 2023 hold for us? 20 minutes reveals the first trends.
A line 11 with 6 more stations
The RATP announces it: in 2023, more punctuality on lines 6 and 11. Over the next few months, the rolling stock on tires on these two lines will be gradually replaced, with 100% financing from Île-de-France Mobilités , in favor of more modern trains.
On line 11, the line’s MP59s will gradually say goodbye. After 60 years of good and loyal service, they will be replaced in 2023 by trains that consume less energy and are equipped with screens and line maps offering better information to passengers. They should improve the comfort of travelers from Châtelet to Rosny-Bois-Perrier, new line terminusfrom the end of the extension works, scheduled for the end of 2023. Bad news for this line, traffic interrupted at 10 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays until the end of September to finalize the extension beyond Mairie-des-Lilas.
On these two lines, if the lack of drivers is not to be neglected, as on the whole network, the obsolescence of the rolling stock is very often put forward by the RATP to explain the figures communicated in November on the regularity of railway networks. For the users of these two lines, the objectives were not achieved. The RATP affirms to the Parisian, a month ago, that there would have been no improvement before “the end of the 1st quarter of 2023”.
Ile-de-France Mobilités also announces 100% of metros renovated in 2023 for line 7 of the Paris metro and 100% automation of line 4.
Future autonomous buses
The RATP group has been experimenting for several months with a 100% autonomous bus on line 393 Sucy-Bonneuil/Thiais-Carrefour de la Résistance. After tests carried out at night, then during the day in cohabitation with the traditional buses of the line, the autonomous vehicle, 12 meters long and with a capacity of 18 seats, is preparing to welcome its first passengers in the current of the 1st quarter of 2023.
The year 2023 will also mark the entry into service of the thousandth bus running on biomethane, as part of the bus2025 program initiated by the RATP and Île-de-France Mobilités. Initiated in 2015, during COP21, the bus2025 program is continuing to roll out at a good pace. More than 50% of the fleet used by the RATP is already made up of clean buses (electric, biomethane and hybrid) and 9 bus centers have now been converted to electric or biomethane.
On the tram side, Ile-de-France Mobilités will put two new lines into service T10 between Croix-de-Berny and Clamart Jardin-Parisien and the T12 between Massy and Evrywhich will serve twelve towns in Essonne.
Discussions on the Navigo for the future
If Valérie Pécresse succeeded in limiting in extremis the increase in the Navigo pass, which, from January 1, 2023, will increase from 75.20 to 84.10 for the monthly offer, thanks to aid of 200 million euros from the “State, the problem of financing public transport in the long term is not settled in Île-de-France. However, with this dazzling progression, users, who for five and a half years had been paying the same price, were going to have greater requirements in terms of “quality of transport”, observed the president of the Île-de-France region, deeming “inadmissible” the problems encountered on the RATP network in recent months.
For Jean Castex, who got into his habit as CEO at the end of November, the challenges are great. Aware of the concerns encountered by the Paris transport authority – problems of punctuality, recruitment, absenteeism, purchasing power, openness to competition from buses, etc. – he has already set out his objectives. In addition to an effort on line B of the RER, the most irregular of the Ile-de-France network, its priorities, he said, “are those of the users, that is to say all the bus and metro lines which are impacted by the problem of understaffing and which should see their quality of service improve in the coming months”. “I heard the message from travelers and we are going to do better,” he further promised. Will 2023 be the year of a comeback for the RATP?