Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 10:26 p.m., January 29, 2024
Valérie Pécresse said she was “confident” that the level of service in transport would be restored by March: “I am confident, because I still see enormous progress”, confides the president of Île-de-France Mobility. A great effort has been made in recruiting operators in public transport in the region.
The president of Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) Valérie Pécresse said on Monday that she was "confident" that the level of service in public transport in the region would be restored by March, thanks to a major effort to recruit employees. operators. “The operators have rolled up their sleeves and are getting wet,” assured Valérie Pécresse in front of journalists, after an extraordinary board meeting of the transport authority for the Ile-de-France region.
The transport offer returns to its pre-Covid levels
The CEOs of RATP, Jean Castex, and SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, in particular, were summoned to take stock of their action plans against the problems of recruitment and staff absenteeism, which have largely harmed to the deterioration of punctuality over the last two years. The RATP has pulled out all the stops to recruit drivers and maintenance employees, and is now placing the emphasis on station agents. The SNCF has also increased its workforce.
“I am confident, because I still see enormous progress, and in particular this massive arrival of forces,” enthused Valérie Pécresse, who had demanded a return to normal by March – in time for the Games Summer Olympics and Paralympics. The transport offer has gradually risen since 2022 to gradually return to its pre-Covid levels, in particular for buses. However, three metro lines remain in great difficulty: 6, 8 and 13.
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Absenteeism and sick leave, the main reasons for “production losses”
Another scourge encountered by the two operators: absenteeism and the explosion of false sick leave. They represent 50% of the “production losses” of Ile-de-France transport, that is to say the difference between the actual offer and the offer planned in the contracts with IDFM. RATP has increased its checks on sick leave and recruited four doctors for this purpose. More than a hundred dismissals were decided following the discovery of some of these false judgments.
Furthermore, the number of abandoned packages has exploded in recent years: six packages are forgotten every day across the entire network, three times more than in 2019. "We have no scientific study to explain this phenomenon, but we imagine that the increase in the use of smartphones and headsets means that travelers have their minds elsewhere,” Jean Castex believes. The RATP intends to reduce the intervention times of dog technical teams, by distributing them a little better across the network and by increasing from 20 to 36 dogs capable of detecting explosives.
Valérie Pécresse, also president of the Île-de-France region, also welcomed an agreement made with the emergency services which will allow people who are victims of illness to be removed from the trains, while it takes up to 'now treat them on site - which causes delays.