Paris to near-double metro ticket price during Olympics

Members of the public use the metro in Paris ©Getty Images

Metro tickets will almost double in price during the Paris Olympics next year to help cover the cost of running urban transport with millions more visitors in the capital during the Games, the regional transport authority said this week.

Single tickets will be sold for four euros ($4.37), compared to 2.10 euros now, and 10-ticket blocks for 32 euros, compared to 16.90 currently.

The head of the Paris region's transport authority, Valerie Pecresse, said in a video posted late on Monday on X, formerly Twitter, that annual and monthly travel passes for residents would not be affected by the steep price rises.

"It is out of the question that people living in the Paris region should pay for the extra cost" brought on by the Olympic Games and estimated at 200 million euros, Pecresse said.

Some 10 million visitors are expected during the Olympic and Paralympic Games starting next July, requiring more frequent transport services.

Tourists will, however, be able to buy a special flat-rate pass for 16 euros per day or 70 euros per week during the Games for travel around Paris and its region, including to the Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports.

Pecresse advised Paris residents to stock up on metro tickets before July to avoid the surcharge.

She said the surcharge would be effective from July 20 to September 8.

Gary Hunt of France checks the Metro stops while making his way to the training day of the second stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series on June 16, 2023 in Paris. ©Dean Treml/Red Bull

Lost in the metro? Paris translation app aims to help visitors

The Paris metro has launched an instant translation app ahead of next year's Olympic Games to help hapless foreign visitors navigate the French capital's urban transport system.

The meandering metro, featuring more than 300 stations whose names can be hard to find or pronounce even for natives, can easily become a nightmare for anybody without fluent French.

In comes Tradivia, an instant translation app able to handle 16 languages, with which metro operator RATP has equipped 6,000 of its staff across the network's stations.

The app translates spoken queries, including in English, German, Mandarin, Hindi and Arabic, into French for the benefit of RATP's agents whose responses then get translated back to the language of the visitor.

The app has been specifically tailored to the Paris metro experience, and knows its way around station names, itineraries and the various ticket and travel pass types that can leave tourists bewildered.