- Pascal Bolo, the president of Semitan (Nantes public transport mixed economy company), admits that the use of Nantes public transport has far from returned to normal.
- Sanitary measures for both Semitan employees and users are still effective in transport.
- Semitan president fears "a major crisis" in public transport.
He too will not escape the crisis. French public transport is sure to bear the brunt of the consequences of the coronavirus. In Nantes, the offer is gradually starting to return to normal, attendance is still far away. For 20 Minutes , Pascal Bolo, president of Semitan, gives an update on the situation of public transport in Nantes during the period of confinement / deconfinement and on the financial future which promises to be very complicated.
Can you already give us some figures of the supply and attendance in recent weeks?
During confinement, attendance was 8-10% of the usual, almost 90% less. Which led us to drastically reduce the offer, it amounted to 20 or 30%. Since the deconfinement, we are gradually loading up until this week in a situation where in terms of trams, we are at the maximum supply, and in terms of buses, we are in green day, that is to say say the normal offer for a month of June. We now have a transport offer that is 94% of the maximum in the middle of winter. Attendance rose between 40 and 45%.
Is it still possible to respect social distancing?
Yes, at this level, we respect social distancing almost all the time. But, more and more, we are going to have peaks at 100 people by trams (30 or 40 permanently at the moment) and there, we will have trouble respecting social distancing. For information, a tram can take 220 people in total. It is for this reason that we hope that from June 22 (third part of the deconfinement), we will have some flexibility on the requirement of social distancing because anyway if our attendance continues to rise, we will not will no longer be able to meet it.
What are the rules for users?
Three essential rules: social distancing, wearing a mandatory mask and also until Tuesday, we had prohibited entry through the front door. This protected the driver from any contact and limited the capacity of the vehicle because we put tape to neutralize the front part of the vehicle. Since Tuesday, we can enter through the front door of the vehicle and we return to compulsory validation. Checks will also resume. Finally, we installed hydroalcoholic gel dispensers on buses, chronobus and trams.
What were the employee protection measures?
We provided them with masks, they were mandatory for drivers. We lifted the anti-aggression windows which turned into anti-Covid windows, in addition to the neutralization of the front part of the vehicle [more effective since Tuesday]. For several weeks, the service was taken to the depot after disinfection of the vehicles, but this is no longer the case today given the offer. We could not offer the quasi maximum offer with constraints of return to the depot with each change of services.
Do users respect the health measures in place?
Overall yes, it is very well respected, especially the wearing of a mask. We distributed more than 5,000 at the start of the deconfinement. There are of course some recalcitrants who increase with the increase in attendance. We also feel a bit of relaxation. We find around Commerce concerns of deal, racketeering or alcoholism, situations that were already present before confinement. There is a core of individuals who rot the atmosphere. At the start of the week, passengers were fighting with each other on the tram. One of our agents got spit on.
How do your prevention and control officers experience the situation?
They are particularly sensitive to the issue of direct and close contact with the public. This is why we suspended the control of tickets [they resumed Tuesday], it was not worth creating opportunities for tension and very close contact. We then transformed our controllers into mediation and prevention agents, more on the platforms than in vehicles. There was no right of withdrawal at Semitan.
Do you think there will be a before and after Covid-19?
Necessarily. First, there will be a major crisis. That of the crisis in the public transport economy because it is not quite tomorrow the day before that we will find the level of traffic that we had before the crisis. In the future, this will have consequences for the means and the general economy of public transport. I fear that the government has not fully understood the emerging crisis.
Do you feel that the public transport sector has been abandoned by the government?
In the measures that have been announced for local authorities, there are a little more than 3 billion for the departments mainly to cover their new expenses and the brutal increase in the number of beneficiaries of the RSA, but in terms of economy of public transport, we are headed straight for a major crisis because there is no economy of public transport with a sharp drop in frequentation as we have known it. This could pose very significant problems in the short term. Especially since the mobility payment which is the main resource of urban public transport is in free fall in terms of revenue. We will end up with considerable holes in the budget.
Do you already have an estimate of the shortfall?
We took free measures for subscribers for two months. In total, with the drop in mobility payments, we could end up in 2020 with a shortfall in revenue of all kinds of 20 million euros for the Metropolis. It is quite considerable. Fortunately, we have an auxiliary transport budget which was in very good health, otherwise we would be in great difficulty this year.
How to regain the confidence of the inhabitants?
This is the major issue. In public opinion surveys, public transport has been identified as the second possible source of contamination after nightclubs. Regaining the confidence of the inhabitants is something essential. We do a lot for cleaning vehicles. There, for example, we will disinfect with a new process that allows us to go to every corner. We will make a lot of effort to convince users that they can return to public transport with confidence. The solution does not have to be to return to the car, it would obviously be terrible for the functioning of our cities.
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- Covid 19
- Coronavirus
- Semitan
- Public transport
- Nantes