As in any major city, Paris public transport operator RATP is trying to develop its network and implement new solutions in order to fulfill a door-to-door offer. It implies multimodality, and as the sharing sector is currently buzzing (Bird, Lime, Bolt, and Wind launched just over the last 3 months, ofo, Mobike and soon Oribiky, new car-sharing operators to soon take over Autolib’) RATP chose to partner with an existing solution.

The one month pilot signed with ofo will start during the European Mobility Week, and requires the bike-share operator to provide around 40 bikes at the direct surroundings of the 6 main stations of the T3a tram station, a southern peripheral line. A team of dedicated patrollers will be in charge to gather, position and perform first-level maintenance, and a 30% discount will be offered to the tram users.

So we are building humanized dockless bike-share stations… It sounds odd, but it is where many of the bike-share actors are heading: a more flexible system, either dock-based with an over-capacity solution, or dockless but geofenced. Anyway, this kind of partnerships starts to answer one of the main needs of urban transport: multimodal integration.