Evidencing its expanding international presence, APTA joined forces May 15 with French Ambassador Francois Bujon d'Estang to convene a transatlantic roundtable on transportation policy issues in the two countries. The featured speaker was French Transportation Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot, whose portfolio also includes public works and housing.
Gayssot was in this country to meet with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater the following day on the bilateral general aviation agreement concerning reciprocal landing rights. He also called on U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo.
The transportation roundtable at the French Embassy, co-chaired by APTA President William W. Millar and d'Estang, brought together transportation leaders from the region on transportation policy issues. APTA Chair Howard Breen represented the association's leadership at the meeting. The speakers' panel included Richard A. White, general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority; Mark Dysart, executive director of the High Speed Ground Transportation Association; and David Carol, vice president of Amtrak. A wide-ranging informal discussion session concluded the proceedings.
The minister was accompanied by Jean-Paul Bailly, president of the Paris Regional Transit Authority (RATP), who shared his views on the challenges facing operators around the world.
Gayssot provided an analytical framework by noting that French national legislation affirms the citizen's right of access of means of transport. In consequence, both public and private operators exercise a public service mission in providing transport, and government at all levels accepts responsibility for capital and operating support to cover fare revenue shortfalls.
Special attention is paid in France to "social fares" subsidized by the state, which allow operators to provide services to the young, the elderly, and persons with disabilities at drastically reduced rates. Farebox coverage of operating and infrastructure costs in France, according to Gayssot, is in the range of 30 percent to 40 percent in the provinces and between 45 percent and 55 percent for services provided in the Paris region.
The transport tax levied on employers' payrolls currently ranges from 1.4 percent to 2.4 percent for different jurisdictions in the Paris region and from 0.55 percent to 1.8 percent in the rest of the country. Cumulatively, it raises some 17 billion francs ($2.9 billion) for transit infrastructure and operating cost support. Additionally, employers in the Paris region are required to pay employees half the cost of their commuter passes, which at last report represented a transfer payment of 2.3 billion francs ($386 million).
In his presentation, Bailly--who heads one of the world's largest multimodal transit operators with 38,000 employers, a budget in the range of $5 billion, and about 2 billion annual passengers--identified and explored seven major challenges facing transit operators worldwide:
- new customer demands that can be met only by improved service quality;
- environmental and "quality of life" concerns that call for improved traffic conditions, lower pollution, and buses powered by alternative fuels;
- changes in demographics and new suburb-to-suburb traffic patterns;
- feelings of insecurity among passengers caused by acts of vandalism, violence, fare evasion, graffiti, and objectionable behavior;
- technology innovations that provide new opportunities for serving the customer, such as contactless farecards, passenger information systems, driverless metros, and guided light transit;
- productivity and benchmarking initiatives to improve service delivery at lower cost; and
- shaping the organization of public transit to best reflect and serve the public interest through equity and transparency safeguards.
Bailly summarized how the RATP is responding to the challenges in each of his categories. A copy of his detailed remarks is accessible from the International Transit page on APTANet, www.apta.com.
The technology innovations he mentioned, including the RATP guided light transit demonstration and the massive contactless farecard experiment, will be discussed at a session during the APTA Annual Meeting, this October in New York City.
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