Project: Francile teleticketing project generalization for buses, metros (subways), tramways, trains and regional trains (TER).
Clients: RATP (Paris transit operator) / SNCF(French railway)
System integrators: ASCOM/Thalès e.Transactions

Paris is located in the Ile de France region with nearly 12 million inhabitants and over 25 million tourists a year.
The STIF (Ile de France transport authority), the French government and the Ile de France local authority helped RATP and SNCF as partners in this huge project consisting in replacing all cards and magstripe tickets with ASK dual interface cards, CD97, GTML and contactless paper tickets, C.ticket® for short term riders. ASK also provides contactless readers.

Key figures:

170.000 CD97 and GTML "Carte Intégrale" for annual pass in Ile de France.
550.000 CD97 " Imagine'r " annual cards for school and university students under 26.
Carte Intégrale and Imagine'r can be used in the 8 departments of Ile de France, in RER, metro, buses, trains and tramway.
1.2 million C.ticket® for the Orly Val shuttle.
1500 ASK contactless readers for points of sales terminals.
2.6 billion passengers in 2000 for RATP.

Main issue:

Paris and Ile de France region needed to implement a brand new system to update an ageing magstripe fare collection equipment at the end of its economic and usable life. Counterfeiting and fraud was tremendous estimated to a revenue loss of more than 110 million euros a year for SNCF and RATP in 1999 with an estimated overall 15% fraud on both networks.*
A financial business case with different scenario lead to the introduction of a whole contactless fare collection in 3 phases up to 2005. Ile de France fare collection is based on CD97 and GTML dual interface microprocessor cards for subscribers and C.ticket® contactless paper tickets for visitors and the 10% occasional residents.
"It makes no sense from a security or maintenance stand point to continue to use magstripe cards along with standard smart cards" says Michel Barjansky, from RATP.

* 1999 Report on Ile de France teleticketing by RATP and SNCF.