Voguéo

Voguéo was a water taxi service operated on the rivers Seine and the Marne in the Île-de-France (the area around Paris).

The Syndicat des transports d'Île-de-France (STIF) adopted the service in 2007. It started on 28 June 2008 between the Gare d'Austerlitz in the 13th arrondissement of Paris and the École Vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort Métro station. Between the two termini the journey took 38 minutes, and the following year this was reduced to 28.

Unlike the tourist river services in Paris (such as the bateaux-mouches), this new route was different. It was designed for commuters, not tourists, and financed by the STIF, which meant it could be integrated into the existing fare system for the Île-de-France (see the section on fares and financing, below). For the occasional traveller, a one-time ticket was sold on board. The route revived passenger river transport on the Seine, since it disappeared in 1934 from competition with the rail network. Service was provided by the with catamarans specially built by Fountaine-Pajot.

On 5 June 2011 this "experimental service" closed, although there was due to be a fuller service starting "some time in 2013" which has not materialised.

History

Timeline 1837: First appearance of steamboats, operated by the 1866: Reorganisation of passenger riverboat services and formation of the 1917: Termination of the river routes because of low passenger numbers 1921: Creation of a route operated by the (STCRP) 5 May 1934: Termination of river services on the Seine 11 July 2007: The STIF launches an experimental water taxi on the eastern reach of the Seine October 2007: Operations are contracted to the for two and a half years, four catamarans are ordered from Fountaine-Pajot End of November 2007: The Voguéo name and logo are unveiled 11 April 2008: The first boat is launched on the Seine 28 June 2008: Opening of the first five-stop route 1 June 2009: Increase of service frequency 5 June 2011: Closure of the experimental service

Paris water taxis

Water taxis on the Seine operated for many years, but were rapidly made redundant at the start of the 20th century with the development of rail transport. Some were local to the inner city like the Paris Métro, while others reached out to the suburbs like the railways, such as the Vincennes line. Until 1828, with the creation of horse-drawn buses,Excepting the brief life of Blaise Pascal's Carrosses à cinq sols between 1662 and 1677. passenger river traffic was the only mode of public transport in the Île-de-France.

Until the 19th century, horse-drawn boats and galiots served a steady stream of passengers on the river. Until the canal excavations around the river and the creation of locks downstream to Rouen under the reign of Louis-Philippe I, most of the traffic travelled upstream from Paris. At the end of the 17th century, and in the 18th, boats relayed goods to Montereau and Sens, in Yonne. Others served as passenger transport from the Pont Royal in Paris to the villages of Passy, Auteuil, Meudon, Sèvres and Saint-Cloud, downstream, and were particularly frequent on Sundays and holidays after the opening of the public Parc de Saint-Cloud by Queen Marie Antoinette, and the establishment of a funfair in September. An order of 23 March 1735 fixed the fares for river journeys: two French sols for Chaillot and Passy, four for Sèvres and Saint-Cloud, and up to two sols for each stop beyond. It took two hours to travel from Paris to Saint-Cloud.

From 1837, river barges were steadily replaced by steamboats with free connections with the many bus lines, such as the . Under the Second French Empire, the river navigation was reorganised, and reinforced for the 1867 Éxposition Universelle, which took place on the Champ de Mars, Paris.

The was established in 1866. It provided river transport between Charenton and Suresnes with a fleet of paddle steamers, similar to those used since 1864 on the river Saône in Lyon and built in the Lyon district of La Mouche, from which the name Bateau Mouche comes. The service had a strong reputation with the public, and the Préfecture set the fares, timetables and frequencies.

Several companies swiftly followed: in 1876 the operated eighteen pontoons, twelve of them in Paris. In response, the reduced its fares and increased the number of boats in service. But the fierce competition turned out to be disastrous, and in 1878, the two companies ran operations jointly. A third player appeared in 1885, the , which operated fast boats with lower fares on the Marne between Lagny-sur-Marne and Charenton, and another line from Charenton to Suresnes. In 1886, the several companies merged under the name .

This company ran three lines: Tuileries–Suresnes, Charenton–Auteuil and Austerlitz-–Auteuil. A fourth opened in 1895 between the Louvre and Ablon-sur-Seine. The Charenton–Auteuil line was the busiest, with a flat fare of 20 centimes, more on Sundays and holidays. Traffic was immense, with 25 million annual journeys (around 70 thousand a day) between 1886 and 1900, over a route totalling from Charenton-le-Pont to Suresnes totalling 47 stops. Service was provided by a fleet of 107 boats. River traffic reached its zenith during the Exposition Universelle of 1900 with 42 million passengers, but after 1900 the service quickly declined with the evolution of the electric tramways and the opening of the Paris Métro dealt a fatal blow. In 1913, there were 13 million passengers, but traffic collapsed during the First World War, and service finished in 1917 from a lack of passengers.

In 1921 the STCRP, the predecessor of the RATP, won the concession for Parisian riverboats. On 4 May, a line opened between Maisons-Alfort and the Louvre, then extended to Auteuil, but the traffic numbers anticipated by the of the Seine department, of around seven million passengers a year, turned out to be less than two million. Changes in the fares and routes, aiming to make them more attractive, gave some relief for a while: in 1923, passenger numbers were nearly 5 million. But the decline then continued, and steepened with competition from the quicker railways, and so in 1926 it was decided to suspend winter services, from 1 November to 1 March. In 1933, traffic was less than 1.3 million passengers.

River connections finished on 5 May 1934 by a decision of the , blaming passenger numbers. Since then the Seine, in Paris, saw only merchant traffic, and a few pleasure boats, until the 1950s, when the first private tourist service opened, with old units restored and adapted.

Birth of the Voguéo Before 2008, boat services were run only by the Bateau mouche companies, who catered more for tourists than commuters. Not being a public service, the fares were not restricted by the regional Syndicat des transports d'Île-de-France (Paris region transport commission), and were much higher than other public transport fares, the highest in the region. The bateaux-mouches also did not accept public transport tickets such as the Paris T or the Carte Orange.

The only ostensibly public service was the Batobus, but this was not convenient from where commuters actually lived, and would not accept the common commuter tickets, its prices were designed for tourists. Prices were too high for Parisiens: the Batobus service introduced an annual season ticket priced at €55, but the daily price stayed at €12. Also, its hours of operation was not suited to commuters, in the morning it started at 10am in the tourist season, and in the winter, the last boat left at 4pm.

In response, from July 2007 a regular service was inaugurated along the Paris canals, the Canal Saint-Martin and the Canal Saint-Denis, for commuters who worked in the Parc du Millénaire (on the border of the 19th Arrondissement and Aubervilliers), a center for newspaper and other media workers. This was all set up by Icade, the owner of two such presses and also amusement parks. The canal boats were long, made by Alternatives Énergies by a company titled , who later merged with Transdev. Beyond all expectations, it got 400 passengers a day.

Even so, the cinema multiplex at MK2 Quai de Loire / Quai de Seine had a small halt stop to let their clients alight, crossing the Bassin de la Villette to the other side of the canal.

But the need for public transport, as opposed to tourist transport, became ever more apparent, and the SCIF proposed a new system for the purpose. A referendum of Parisiens voted against it in 2006, but it was pushed through: traveling by river was now the fashion.

In 2000, the Mayor of London had put in riverboats for commuters along the Thames, connecting with the London Underground. The boats were quicker than the Tube, and were an immediate success. They accepted the London Oyster cards and other through ticketing cards for commuters. In France, Nantes took up the baton in 2003 with its Navibus service, with a pleasure-boat, which was also immediately successful. So the Parisien authorities started to think whether such systems would also work there.

The report of the STIF of 11 July 2007 called officially for an experimental riverboat system along the Seine, integrated into the Metro and other transport networks. In October, this service started, with the contract awarded to Batobus for two and a half years. Four catamarans were ordered from the boatbuilder Fountaine-Pajot. On 22 November 2007 the project got its official name, Voguéo.

So at the end of December, the service was on its way. Four catamarans had been ordered, to enter service in January 2008, and the operations base had been set up at Charenton-le-Pont. In March, the STIF approved the boats' January design, by Franck Darnet Design. On 7 April, the operational base was in place, and the first experimental trip was made four days later, to test the wake. In May and June 2008, the piers and signage were put in place, and at the end of June a week's final trials ran without passengers before the service opened at the end of that month.

On Saturday, 28 June 2008 the boats entered service, with five stops between the Gare de Austerlitz and the École Vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort (Paris Métro).

On the inauguration day, it got a resounding opening welcome from the public, with long queues at every pier waiting for the first boat, leaving at 4 p.m. Between the following Saturday (from 4 p.m.) to the Sunday (at 8 p.m.) it transported passengers, roughly 30 per boat. Each month the passenger numbers were looked over and tweaks to the service made (travel times, connections, prices and so on), with questionnaires to the customers about comfort, tidiness, timeliness and so on. The STIF had guaranteed to have at least 800 available places per hour along the route, and agreed to standards of punctuality, especially during the morning rush hour.

This experiment, lasting two years and seven months until New Year's Eve of 2010, allowed evaluation of the likely customer demand, tweaks to the service timetables, and a more ambitious and frequent daily service during the following year.

During the first three months of the experiment, the Voguéo had passengers, about a thousand a day, with plenty of room for them all, but only a punctuality rate of about 64%. Prices were reduced to €1 to drum up trade.

After about a year of the experiment, the Voguéo came under scrutiny as to its pricing and customer satisfaction: surveys showed a 95% satisfaction rate, and it was awarded a certificate of satisfaction from the French standards organisation AFNOR. All in all, the service was perhaps a little too infrequent and unreliable, especially during the winter, both commuters being put off by the wind and rain, and the boats themselves being slower and less comfortable.

Route and piers

Route