Parkeon announces today that it has been chosen by the RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens), the Paris transport authority, to modernise its passenger ticket sales infrastructure. Parkeon will supply the RATP with a new type of automated ticket sales machine.
This is a major contract for the company and it is estimated to be valued at nearly 35 million euros, including an optional part.
Installed in metro and RER stations, the new automated dispensing and recharging machine will complement the RATP's existing sales infrastructures while, at the same time, improving their automation, security and availability. The deployment of the new terminals should start in 2008.
Using this "universal" machine, RATP customers will be able to purchase and recharge their Navigo contactless pass (the travel card for the Ile de France region) or obtain all conventional magnetic tickets and, eventually, contactless tickets using an extended range of payment modes: coins, bank notes and credit cards.
At a time when the Navigo pass is about to be extended to all "carte Orange" travelcard zones, the RATP is equipping itself with a new sales tool to offer its customers a wider range of services and make access to transport in the Ile de France region even easier, particularly for the partially-sighted, with the inclusion of a specially adapted interface.
"Transport safety and high quality of service objectives: they are the basis of our commitments to passengers and the Ile de France transport organising authority, the STIF", says Philippe Martin, the RATP's Managing Director for Facilities, Services and Sales. "This new automated equipment project testifies our desire to upgrade our sales systems to provide a service better suited to our customers' expectations: easier access to our network, diversity in the places and means of dispensing tickets and increased availability of sales equipment."
For Philippe Millet, Parkeon's Transport Director, "This project is fully in line with Parkeon's expertise. We have proven know-how in the field of automated equipment applied to the transport market. Our terminals owe their reputation both to their sturdiness, reliability and user-friendliness and to the technologies and innovations they incorporate. However, to ensure the success of the present project, we have also taken into account the constraints linked to the specific characteristics of our customer's environment, particularly the safety of passengers and operating personnel."
Philippe Martin adds that: "Parkeon has fully integrated the answers to these specific needs in its offer, to provide passengers with the best in public transport service while, at the same time, guaranteeing optimum economic efficiency; all of these factors naturally led us to place our trust in them again for this major project for the RATP."
(In France, Parkeon is a longstanding strategic partner of the RATP: in particular, the company installed the 1,000 Point-Of-Sale Terminals equipping RATP ticket counters and the 700 automated Navigo machines recently deployed in the metro).
About Parkeon (www.parkeon.com/)
Parkeon develops, constructs and installs management systems and solutions for road parking, access control and revenue management systems for parking structures and car parks, and equipment and systems for transport ticket sales. The company also provides services relating to the management, maintenance and hosting of the systems and equipment it develops.
Parkeon is the leading company in the world in the road-parking field with a 60 % market share. Its pay-and-display machines, numbering some 140,000, are part of the urban landscape in 3,000 towns in 40 countries, and control more than 3 million parking spaces around the world. Parkeon has also installed more than 5,000 automated transport ticket dispensers in Europe, notably in France, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark and Britain.
With a workforce of 850, Parkeon achieved sales of 130 million euros in 2005. The company operates in Europe (in France, where its head office is located, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Britain), and in the United States. Parkeon has a production capacity of up to 2,000 pay-and-display machines per month and 1,000 automated transport ticket dispensers or automatic access control payment terminals per year.
Parkeon was created in November 2003 following the sale of the Parking and Computer Ticketing division of the Schlumberger group. The company has 30 years' experience in the parking sector and played a major role in the development of pay-and-display machines.
