FRANCE: Incumbent operator Keolis announced on October 7 that it had been selected by transport authority Sytral to operate public transport in Lyon for a further six years.
The contract, due to be signed in the coming weeks, followed almost two years of negotiations and will come into effect on January 1 2017. With subsidies of €1·4bn and revenue of €2·2bn over the contract term, Keolis says that this is its largest contract in terms of both revenue and passenger journeys. Ridership on the TCL network currently stands at almost 1·7 million passenger-journeys a day.
The largest public transport network in France outside the Paris region covers four metro lines, five tram lines, two funiculars, and more than 130 bus and trolleybus lines. It also has the highest number of journeys per inhabitant, at 350 per year.
