top of page
Search

Trans Val de Marne. Could we do this in London?


ree

Express orbital bus routes were not invented with Superloop: the Trans Val de Marne (TVM), has been serving the south-east sector of the Paris suburbs for more than 30 years (since 1993) with a very high degree of segregation and very high level of patronage.


RATP (the Paris equivaled of TfL) operates TVM’s low-floor, articulated vehicles between Saint-Maur-Créteil  station (to the east of Paris on both RER line A and Metro line 15) and La Croix de Berny station (to the south of Paris on RER line B) 12.2 route miles away, serving 30 intermediate stops, with a scheduled end-to-end journey time of 64 minutes. That gives an average speed of 11.4 mph. TVM carried 23 million passengers in 2019. By comparison, bus route 18 (Sudbury-Euston), one of the busiest in London, carried 12.6 million passengers in 2022-23


TVM is administered as a tram route and its stops provide interchange with actual tram routes and other public transport modes (see line diagram). 


Over many sections, TVM (and other buses sharing its corridor) have exclusive use of the two segregated centre lanes of a six-lane road. So, passengers must cross two lanes of general traffic (at traffic lights) to reach the TVM platforms which are equipped with ticket machines, seating, shelters and Countdown-type displays and printed information. On other sections, TVM has its own bridges over roads, railways and rivers.  All TVM stops provide wheelchair access to/from the buses


I did not witness weekday traffic because my journey was on a Sunday morning and TVM was operating a 10-minute frequency. At some stages of my journey, the articulated vehicles were full to standing. Many passengers were travelling to/from Sunday morning markets. Peak weekday frequency is every 3 minutes, (see the Fiche Horaire – timetable


On boarding TVM at Pont de Créteil (where TVM crosses the River Marne, a tributary of the River Seine) a woman I soon realised was a plain-clothes ticket inspector had directed me to an on-bus validator to tap in my Navigo easy card. When she later came to scan my card, she told me how many journeys were left on my card. There were more ticket inspectors on RER line B after I boarded at La Croix de Berny.  I can almost report that I have had my tickets inspected by staff more times on brief visits to Paris in recent years than in London while living here and using public transport daily.                                                                       

Neil Roth 


 

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page