While the Olympic and Paralympic Games are due to start in 128 days, public transport in the Ile-de-France region is starting to prepare to welcome an “extraordinary flow” of visitors. “We have been working on the subject for years,” confides Marlène Dolveck, general director of SNCF Gares.
And the objective is simple: to allow visitors – whether from Ile-de-France, French or foreigners – to find their way around the station and find the exit to the Olympic site or the celebration site where they are expected as easily as possible. “Flow management is going to be out of the norm and exceptional, (…) which is why we had to imagine an understandable journey from start to finish for our customers,” explains the woman who is also the deputy general director of the SNCF group in charge of transformation. With an obvious fluidity issue, so that any accident or crowd movement is avoided. In addition, 10,000 agents will be deployed throughout the network to best guide these visitors.
Furthermore, a lot of work has been done on the pictograms for people with disabilities or families with strollers, also welcomed Valérie Pécresse, president of the region and Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM). ), which specifies that the different graphic charters of SNCF, RATP and Paris 2024 have been merged so that the signage is the same across the entire Ile-de-France public transport network. And this, while the promise of the organizers of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is that 100% of spectators must be able to travel to the events by public transport.
Concerning the translation of these billboards into other languages, the president specifies that it is the English and European languages which have been favored, rather than Asian languages in particular. “We have a lot of Chinese and Japanese tourists who will not be there this year, which is why we favored translations into European languages,” she assured. Before detailing: “We are expecting a third of Ile-de-France residents, to whom we will have to explain that their usual route is not the right one, a third of French people (excluding Île-de-France) and 36/38% foreigners. English, Americans as well as non-English speaking Europeans” of whom “a large group will speak German, Spanish or even Portuguese”.
As for Paris 2024, we are defending the adoption of pink as the main color of this signage. “We chose a unique color, a little radical, breaking with classic signage in public transport,” explained Camille Yvinec, the deputy director responsible for the identity of the Paris 2024 brand. A mix “of shapes and colors”, common to all Olympic sites “from Marseille to Paris via Lille”. She, who speaks of “dressing the Games” or even “visual imprint”, explains that “this design is above all at the service of a message”: that the Games will be integrated into the heart of cities. The proof according to her? The fact of having integrated images specific to each city in the official signage, “like the Eiffel Tower on collages in the shape of paving stones”. If in terms of the chosen color palette, no one doubts that they will be visible to everyone, it is nevertheless not certain that these details will be noticed.
