Urban hubs as levers to improve the attractiveness of public transport in a post-COVID context: Insights from the Paris city region
Résumé
The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns have had strong impacts on the public transport sector. The loss in ridership is one of the main challenges faced by transport authorities, who are now looking into solutions to bring passengers back to public transport. Based on the experience of the Paris city-region (Greater Paris), this chapter considers the central role of multimodal hubs in the post-COVID organization of transport networks. It develops the hypothesis that a better quality of hubs, and more generally of intermodal transfers, is essential to promote the use of public transport. This rise in quality should be achieved through integrated planning, but also integrated station management. If the COVID-crisis was a major disruption of the public transport field, it can also appear as an opportunity to question the sector’s professional culture and habits, and its ability to truly offer a seamless multimodal service