It’s voted on! Unsurprisingly, the board of directors of Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM, the regional transport organizing authority) has designated the operators who will be responsible for operating the buses in three of the thirteen “zones” which have been defined in Paris and the inner suburbs as part of the opening to competition of the network, until now managed only by the RATP. As IDFM indicated two weeks ago, it was RATP Cap IDF – the subsidiary created by the Régie to try to succeed itself – which won lots 45 known as “bords de Marne” (Vincennes, Villemomble, Gagny, etc.) and 42 known as the “Seine-Nord loop” which covers the municipalities of Asnières, Levallois-Perret and Saint-Ouen.
RATP, on the other hand, “lost” lot no. 9 “Marne et Brie” awarded to its competitor Keolis. After a long transition period, the new operators will begin operating their respective lots on November 1, 2025, for a period of eight years. The award of these first three DSPs (public service delegations) which mark the concrete start of the process of opening “Parisian” buses to competition — two years after that of the greater suburbs network — has revived controversies and concerns around a project that opponents present as “the destruction of public service”.
France
