FRANCE: Angers tram routes B and C have opened, triggering a recast of the local public transport services operated by RATP Dev Angers under the Irigo brand.
Opening celebrations were held on July 7 and when the first services ran in July 8.
Travel is free until July 14 to encourage people to try public transport. ‘The objective is to encourage a change of habit among our fellow citizens who do not use public transport, with the ambition of increasing the use of the network by 25% by 2027’, said Corinne Bouchoux, Vice-President of Angers Loire Métropole in charge of Ecological Transition & Mobility.
Overlapping routes
Tram Route B runs from Belle-Beille through the city centre to Montplaisir with 18 stops and an end-to-end journey time of 32 min.
Route C shares the same tracks from Belle-Beille to the city centre, than runs over Route A to Angers-Roseraie, with a total of 19 stops and a journey time of 28 min. Ridership on the two new routes is predicted at 72 000 passengers/day.
Construction of the 10·1 km of new line required for routes B and C cost €285·5, with funding from Angers Loire Métropole (€249·5m), the national government (€25m), Pays de la Loire région (€10m) and Feder (€0·7m).
Route A from Angers-Roseraie to Avrillé-Ardenne which opened in 2011 was rerouted in the city centre in 2021, with its original route now forming part of lines B and C.
Trams on each route run every 8 min, providing more frequent services where they overlap.
Angers Loire Métropole has ordered 20 Alstom Citadis X05 trams for routes B and C. These are 32 m long and 2 400 mm wide, with a capacity of 217 passengers, nine more passengers than the 17 Citadis 302 trams supplied for the opening of Route A. They are equipped with CCTV, air-conditioning and large doors and windows.
APS ground level power supply is used on a 0·7 km northern section of Line A and on 0·7 km of the original city centre route from Foch-Maison bleue north to Molière; this has been extended 1·2 km west from Molière to Le Quai on the Belle-Beille line.
Green thread
‘The tramway is a green thread around which other complementary modes of transport will be articulated: a metropolitan bus network enriched with express lines, implementation of park-and-ride facilities connected to tram stops facilitating carpooling, and of course cycling, with the creation of many routes in the city and on the outskirts’, said Jean-Marc Verchère, President of Angers Loire Métropole.
‘This new offer, for the benefit of Angers, its metropolis and all inhabitants, is also a powerful lever for the ecological transition that will allow us to significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.’
