Pending 100% contactless ticketing
Marseille is the multimodal champion!
On 26 April, Marseille’s new contactless ticketing solution was successfully brought into service on the city’s bus, metro and tram network. A milestone in a project that, by the end of the year, will make this Provençal city the largest 100% contactless interoperable area in France – and the most multimodal. We take stock with Bruno Marie, deputy manager for transport of Marseille urban area council.
When it comes to deploying a 100% contactless ticketing system on an interoperable area of 18 municipalities, incorporating eight modes of transport and representing 150 million trips per year, Marseille is not short of ideas (see e-letter no. 10) and, most importantly, it puts them into practice!
To prove it: on 26 April a press conference was held to mark the official inauguration of the new contactless system on the buses, metros and trams run by the Marseille transport agency, RTM, covering the city itself plus three neighbouring municipalities, which together account for nearly 90% of the trips in the interoperable area soon to be created by Marseille Provence Métropole (MPM) urban area council. An important test passed with flying colours, says Bruno Marie, deputy manager for transport at MPM: "In the space of a year, we have wired up more than 560 buses. On the big day everything went like clockwork. The Atlas central system took control, with immediate success on over 97% of buses!" The new smart card also gives users access to the seven park-and-ride car parks run by RTM, and entitles them to monthly season tickets for the regional trains run by SNCF.
Gradual migration for 450,000 season ticket holders
Pending the arrival of single-use contactless tickets, scheduled for this autumn, the devices deployed by ACS include a temporary magnetic module. At the same time, MPM is organising the gradual distribution of the new interoperable cards to its 450,000 season ticket holders. A large part of this campaign is being carried out on-line: "We provide our customers with a dedicated site where they can order their new card and have it made and sent to them free of charge", Bruno Marie explains.
Videophone terminals have also been set up on the metro, enabling users to contact an RTM employee at any time in the event of a problem with their card. The aim is to have sent the cards out to all users by the summer!
Eight modes of transport!
The coming months will obviously be action-packed. ACS project manager Nathalie Rioufol explains: "Between now and October, we must extend the system to the suburban municipalities, and also integrate the fleet of bicycles managed by Decaux and the Frioul island ferries operated by Veolia, into the scope of the ticketing system". This will make Marseille the largest 100% contactless network in France, and the first to incorporate eight different modes of transport: bus, metro, tram, park-and-ride, bicycle, regional bus, regional train and ferry! But Bruno Marie reckons the hardest part is finished: "RTM is by far the largest operator in terms of volume, and the most multimodal." He is full of praise for the spirit of intelligent cooperation between ACS, MPM and RTM: "ACS, which had already supplied RTM’s existing ticketing system, contributed its experience in multimodal, multioperator environments. Without its involvement, a project as complex as ours would have been much more difficult to get off the ground!"