Across France, a national strike has been organized in response to the pension reform project since Thursday, January 19, 2023 and the movement has a good chance of being renewed. Train, TGV, metro, RER, bus and tram traffic will therefore be severely disrupted. Here is a selection of applications and services to help you get by in the absence of RATP and SNCF public transport
The government is pushing to adopt its pension reform. In response, a major strike was organized and the social movement particularly concerned the RATP and the SNCF. Public transport will therefore be severely disrupted during the day of Thursday, January 19, 2023. As a precaution, it is necessary to plan for a renewal of the strike beyond this single day.
Get informed with traffic information
For trains
On its website, the SNCF offers a page dedicated to traffic informationlike most public transport services in urban areas (RATP, TCL, TBM, Tisséo, etc.).
The SNCF application is also very informative and more practical to use on the move. It will inform you live of disruptions, whether related to social movements or accidents. At last, the SNCF Twitter account also helps to keep abreast of traffic.
For the Paris metro
The RATP provides real-time traffic information for the various Parisian metro, tram and RER lines. You can find it on their site, but also thanks to the dedicated application. Every day, forecasts for the next day are posted around 5 p.m. On Twitter, there are also accounts dedicated to each line to easily find the events of the day.
Find your way
If service is disrupted on your usual metro, RER, TER, bus or tram route, you will probably need to find alternative routes. The best way to do this is to use an application like Citymapper or Transit which offers precise and intelligent routes, indicating many alternatives to facilitate connections. They will be much more relevant than Google Maps, which does not take into account disruptions linked to strikes.
Alternatives to public transport
If public transport services are inoperative, it is then necessary to go to alternative means of transport. This is where the smartphone plays its best role and has enabled the creation of clever services to respond to this problem.
electric scooters
Lime, Dott and Tier services allow you to use their self-service electric scooters. Note also that these scooters could soon disappear in Paris.
Self-service bicycles
If scooters aren’t your cup of tea, you can also turn to self-service bikes. Several services also offer electric bikes. We think in particular of Vélib in the city of Paris, but many cities offer similar platforms with, sometimes, the application that goes with it.
Self-service scooters
Also consider self-service electric scooter apps such as Cityscoot.
Carpooling
The carpooling application par excellence remains BlaBlaCar, but there are alternatives such as Klaxit which specializes in journeys between home and work. You will be able to take advantage of the slightest journey in Ile de France for free, when the drivers will receive a guaranteed remuneration of at least 4 euros.
VTC services
Finally, there are also obviously VTC services such as Uber and others. Be careful, however, beyond the greater carbon impact, prices on these services can skyrocket when demand is very high. However, during a social movement, the demand is particularly strong. Ideally, it is therefore better to resort to this option only if you are in a hurry.
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