A new French revolution

Reims—Historic setting, city center, grassed trackway, and automobiles. 

Some two hundred and twenty years after the historic French Revolution, a new revolution is engulfing French cities, large and small. This new revolution seeks to stem the tide of automobile domination of French culture.  While it may never come close to doing so, it nonetheless is having a noticeable and favorable effect on the way French cities and suburbs look and function. 

By inserting high-quality transit systems into old urban and new suburban fabrics, largely at the expense of space previously dedicated to automobiles, the new revolutionaries have reversed declining transit use, and have stimulated pedestrian, and bicycle use in French cities.  Every day in cities throughout the country hundreds of thousands of riders board new, high capacity, fast, and airy “trams” (that is what the French call their light rail vehicles) that stretch up to a block long, to reach universities, hospitals, malls, and jobs located throughout the urban agglomerations they serve.  Many if not most of the important destinations are in auto-oriented suburbs. 

Angers—Bright car interior even on a rainy Saturday.  Note the car bending into a narrow alley.

New transit riders turn into thousands of pedestrians as they stroll to and from stations along streets and in plazas and campuses that now are pedestrian safe and attractive.  Many push baby buggies or pull shopping carts, which they take on board.  Bicyclists, too, take their mounts right on board the modern trams, making use of the huge door capacity to do so, and using their personal wheels to reach destinations not directly served by the trams.  Buses, their schedules coordinated with trams, also extend the tram service areas on both the origin and destination ends of trips.

LeMans—long vehicles; lots of doors, a baby buggy, and station integrated with buildings, sidewalks, streets.

Reims—Art of Insertion. Tight spaces, pedestrians, and trams on grassed track with autos and trucks.

What is happening is that these public transport projects are functioning as the backbone in what amounts to “complete streets.”  We think there is much to be learned from the new French revolution for creating more effective urban and suburban development and transit policies on this side of the “pond.”  

Nantes—The line passes through a suburb with single family homes.

Some North Americans may dismiss the French approach at “face value” without really knowing what it is, because they may think French cities are so unlike those in North America, and that the French solutions to urban problems are meaningless in the American context.  From visits and movies our images of France are of beautiful cities and architecturally-rich towns hundreds of years old.  We tend to conclude that most French people live, work, and shop in these areas.  We likely also feel that the French do not embrace driving like Americans do, and that the French have for years had far superior transit systems to those in North America.

The reality is quite different.  French cities face many of the same problems as those in North America, and some policies crafted for addressing problems in French cities are applicable to their North American counterparts.  There are a number of similarities:

• Most French people live, work, shop, study, and recreate in modern, auto-oriented suburbs rather than in quaint old towns.  Auto ownership and use in France is approaching that of the United States and Canada.  Shopping mostly takes place in big box stores and malls with ample free parking; most college students attend American-style suburban campuses, many workers drive their cars to free parking surrounding high rise suburban office towers.
• Other than Paris, with its comprehensive Metro and regional rail systems, most French cities for decades have relied on buses to meet their public transportation needs.  As in the U.S., the French gave up on traditional streetcars years ago, even before World War II for Paris.  After the war and reconstruction, bus ridership was falling in most French cities.
• Pervasive and increasing auto use in French cities and suburbs has led to severe air pollution while compromising national policy to lessen reliance on petroleum energy. To address these problems the French resolved to resuscitate public transportation by installing fixed infrastructure in the form of modern light rail and bus rapid transit (BRT) in cities throughout France.  In each city, high quality public transport services have been patterned as a framework directly serving work places, university campuses, hospital campuses, big box stores, and malls throughout the urban conglomeration.  The high quality framework is superior to local buses in terms of speed, capacity, and attractiveness.  Local bus routes are reconfigured to feed riders to and from the framework stations and fill in the gaps.  Park-and-ride offers an important access mode, too.  The bicycles, which had gone out of fashion, now figure prominently as an access and egress mode, as well as a mode in its own right.

A major problem facing French designers of these systems was how to insert them into the urban fabric.  Their German neighbors had been achieving similar results since the 1960s, but they had the advantage of never having eliminated streetcars in their cities.  In some German cities transport planners incrementally upgraded historic streetcar systems into surface metros running through the middle of neighborhoods and business districts. Because they got rid of streetcars decades earlier the French could not follow the German organic approach.  Instead, they had to convince city populaces that insertion of high quality and high capacity transit would be to their benefit. 

The first French success in developing a new tram line was in the Nantes conurbation containing about 800,000 people in southwest France. In 1985, the city’s first line opened with characteristics now found throughout France.  The line used street rights of way, plazas, and campuses throughout.  Autos are prohibited from driving on the tracks in most places.  Service is much faster than local buses, with higher capacity, too.  The light rail cars are bright, airy, and cheerful. They bend in two to six places. Its roughly 80-meter (264-foot) length is punctuated with large doors so scores of waiting passengers can board a car in seconds.  Stops range from 0.4 km (0.25 miles) to 1.6 km (one mile) apart, and trams come along about every four minutes.  Buses and park-and-ride lots serve many stations. 

Today, three lines serve Nantes, carrying about 280,000 passengers each day not only to the city center but to big box stores, hospitals, universities and office blocks, mostly in the suburbs.  On a fourth corridor, where there is considerable road width, a dedicated busway hosts a BRT line.  Generally, space is at a premium along the new rail lines.  In places, individual rail lines squeeze through narrow streets barely 9.1 m (30 feet) wide and do so carrying over 100,000 passengers per day.  From one end to the other of each line the designers of what the French call the “nouveau tram” have rebuilt the urban form from building façade to building façade creating beautiful streets that are a joy to walk along.  Simple station platforms are visually integrated into the street and building forms that surround them.

In short, these new French systems have transformed not just the public transportation service features but the urban form and the underlying urban infrastructure.

Nantes—Light rail line takes priority over other traffic and is designed into a narrow inner suburban street.

Planners encountered huge resistance to their initial tram proposals for Nantes but the system now is well accepted there.  What started in Nantes has spread throughout France.  The example of Nantes lessened resistance to proposals for similar systems in other cities. Even though the going was slow at first, in the 14 years after Nantes opened its first line six additional French cities opened similar lines and the pace has picked up since.  From 2000 to 2010 another 10 opened and seven more have been added over the past four years. That’s 24 urban agglomerations in France with tram systems now in operation with three more under construction.  In addition, many of these cities have expanded the scope of their initial lines just as Nantes did.

Certain remarkable aspects are common to these French tram systems, relative to:

• City size—they are operating cost-effectively in all sizes of cities, from 100,000 population and up. Of the 27 French tram systems in operation or construction, there are operations in Paris and in five cities with populations exceeding 1,000,000. However, 14 of the new tram systems are operating in cities with less than 400,000 population—and five are in cities of under 200,000 population.
• System layout—they are being developed under a design concept referred to as “insertion.” This term can be generally defined to represent the design of the rail path into the existing development pattern of the city. For the smaller cities the path is inserted directly through the central area. In the outlying neighborhoods the path is located to serve major activity centers, skirting around buildings using the existing streets, plazas, and campuses. Most of these outlying major activity centers (e.g., shopping centers, universities) are designed no differently than what we see in North America and cater to automobile access.
• Pathway design—they are being designed to positively transform the existing urban appearance surrounding the pathway. From building front-to-building front, attention is given to the necessary functional elements of the tram but also to the urban design of the adjacent infrastructure. The pathway elements are comparable to U.S. light rail systems in many ways, but typically include more use of urban art, grassed trackways and limited undergrounding of traction power systems.

LeMans—Heavy light rail patronage to and from a mall in suburbs; lots of wheeled carts in the crowd in background.

Orleans—A high performance line transverses an inner city market aesthetically and safely.

• Emphasis on ridership—they are carrying large passenger loads. The trams are able to provide a relatively high capacity transit (i.e., single cars with from three to seven articulated sections, and service frequencies often as short as 4-5 minutes). For example, the single tram line in Nice (with a population of 350,000) is carrying 90,000 passengers on an average day, or about 10,000 passengers per km (17,000/mile) of service.

In Orleans  Center City where two lines cross, the vehicle design emphasizes doors and how the vehicle fits in with surroundings.

This all sounds good. But the challenge for our North American public transportation planning and design communities is to learn from the French experiences and figure out what can be transferred without being deterred by what cannot. Without a doubt there are certain uniquely French features of tram development that cannot be transferred, such as the political system and local governmental structure. On the other hand, there are numerous urban planning, development and system design features that can—and should—be emulated.

Are we ready for a new U.S. revolution?

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As general manager of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit Development Board from 1979 to 2003, Tom Larwin brought the first modern light rail line in the US into operation. An electrical engineering consultant living in Vancouver, Tom Parkinson advocated and worked on light rail projects throughout the United States and Canada. Greg Thompson is Professor Emeritus, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Florida State University, Tallahassee. All three are members of the Subcommittee on International Light Rail Developments AP075(3) of the Transportation Research Board. Photos are by the authors.

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