Paris unveils its new bus shelter

Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, and Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board and Co-Chief Executive Officer of JCDecaux SA, unveiled the new Paris bus shelter on Monday at Place de la Bastille.

Paris is replacing its 2,000 bus shelters for the first time in 15 years. Parisians and visitors will benefit from the innovative, eco-friendly and connected street furniture.

JCDecaux's subsidiary SOPACT was awarded the contract by the Paris City Council's tender department to manufacture and maintain the bus shelters, which will have the French "Origine France Garantie" label.

These 2,000 new bus shelters will be gradually rolled out across Paris, at bus stops, airport shuttle stops, key sightseeing stops, and taxi ranks, with installation due to be completed by summer 2015.

Designed by Marc Aurel, the new-generation bus shelters will have a pared-back, streamlined, contemporary silhouette that blends perfectly with the capital city's exceptional urban environment.

They will offer, for the first time, a new range of innovative services accessible to users, pedestrians and visitors alike. Designed to integrate the needs of users, these new bus shelters will see Paris also modernising the image of the bus and strengthening the appeal of public transport.

The new shelters will have the following key features:

• a larger roof covering a bigger surface area, with a range of several shelters depending on the available space;
• easier access and circulation within the shelter;
• signal masts that are offset so that the type of shelter (bus, sightseeing line, taxi, airport shuttle) and the waiting time for the next service can be read from a distance;
• for the visually impaired, tactile labels and a button for voice announcement of waiting times;
• manually lit information panels at night;
• USB ports for mobile phone charging;
• wheelchair access to 100 large touch-screen digital information and service panels;
• 100 roofs fitted with solar panels (helping to save energy) and 50 with greenery planted on them;
• electricity savings of 35% in comparison to the previous bus shelters.

The 100 digital screens will serve as a platform for the Paris City Council to provide both Parisians and visitors with new, high-performance, quality services.

Interactive touch-screens showing innovative area maps devised by the City Council will highlight local areas of interest, such as municipal facilities or Vélib’ self-service bicycle hire. They will also offer applications and content developed by businesses, start-ups and citizens as part of a competition launched by the Paris City Council and JCDecaux in October 2014.

Eleven applications were accepted for this first one-year experimental phase; they will be gradually rolled out and the Paris City Council may develop and enhance their content.