This is a “world first” we are told, as the technology is so state-of-the-art. The very first biarticulated buses, 100% electric, 24 meters long (the maximum allowed by European legislation) and powered by high-power batteries will arrive in Île-de-France within a few months. Designed by the Belgian family business Van Hool and the French company Alstom, they were specifically designed for Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), the organizing authority for public transport in the region, to equip the T line Zen 4 in the summer of 2024. There, on this “high quality of service” line which will connect Viry-Châtillon and Corbeil-Essonnes (Essonne), thirty of these new generation buses will replace the buses of line 402 “today ‘saturated today’. And within a few years, probably after 2027, twenty-six others will be deployed on the T Zen 5 line, which will connect Paris to Choisy-le-Roi (Val-de-Marne).
“A real innovation” according to IDFM, which promises “more comfortable, efficient and environmentally friendly journeys”. More spacious, these electric buses will be able to accommodate 140 passengers, i.e. “40% more than articulated buses and twice as many as standard buses”. They will also be brighter, equipped with USB ports and information screens, air-conditioned, accessible to people with reduced mobility (PRM) and equipped with video surveillance cameras. In addition, they will use artificial intelligence (AI) to finely manage charging. The tool in question will in fact be able to indicate charging needs and adjust energy management accordingly “to promote long battery life”.
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So many characteristics which will only be of interest if the bus leaves and arrives on time. And this is indeed the small revolution compared to the current situation, since the T Zen 4 – which will circulate on its own site with dedicated lanes and priority at intersections – must travel at a cruising speed of 26 km/h. Compared to around 13 km/h on average for all Ile-de-France buses and less than 8 km/h on average for Parisian buses. “It is a bus which offers the performance of a tramway, but which requires less infrastructure and costs, in fact, much less expensive”, summarizes Stéphane Beaudet, the vice-president of the Île-de-France region in charge transports. The elected official, mayor of Evry-Courcouronnes, estimates that the work to put a tram into service would have cost “3 to 4 times more expensive”, compared to 140 million euros for the redevelopments carried out for the arrival of the T Zen 4 in its municipality. To which must be added 30 million euros for buses. That’s a budget of 170 million euros.
With 3.9 million trips every day along 1,500 lines, the Île-de-France bus network “is one of the densest in the world, and soon one of the most economical in terms of carbon emissions. CO2”, IDFM also wants to believe. The result of a policy put in place in 2016 by the president of the region Valérie Pécresse, who launched her major bus plan and wanted the renewal of nearly 11,000 buses in less than 10 years. Since this promise, the authority in charge has purchased more than 4,000 clean buses, representing the renewal of nearly 40% of the existing fleet at this stage. Among them, 12% are hybrid vehicles, 18% are biomethane vehicles and 7% are electric vehicles. And the objective is ambitious: “equip 100% of the fleet with clean vehicles from 2025 in dense urban areas, and 2029 for the entire Ile-de-France region”.
“The replacement between 2014 and 2020 by Île-de-France Mobilités of more than 2,000 buses (Euro II, III and IV) out of a fleet of more than 9,000 vehicles by more recent buses (Euro VI, hybrid, CNG and electric buses ) has reduced annual emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), exhaust particles (PN) by around a third and CO2 emissions from buses by less than 5%,” had also pointed out highlights an Airparif study, carried out in 2021 by the Île-de-France Air Quality Observatory on air pollutant emissions from buses in real operating conditions. Enough to make this abandoned mode of transport more attractive in favor of less risky solutions for arriving on time, but essential in the inner and outer suburbs that the rail network does not always serve.
