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RATP drivers accuse the Paris region public transport company of imposing manipulations on them to hide the warning signals on buses before their half-yearly technical inspection and thus avoid their immobilization (AFP/Archives/Ludovic MARIN)
RATP assured on Thursday that the procedures carried out on its buses before their technical inspection were regular, while drivers accuse the public transport company in the Paris region of covering up warning signals.
According to testimonies collected by the newspaper Le Parisien, drivers are given an electronic suitcase with which they can “erase all the warning lights indicating a technical problem on the dashboard before going through the inspection”.
“It is not possible to hide a defect on a bus during a technical inspection,” stressed a spokesperson for the RATP, Jimmy Brun, during a press conference on Thursday. These are “serious and unacceptable allegations against the RATP and its safety practices for buses,” the spokesperson insisted.
According to the RATP, these diagnostic cases are used “in one case only”. Buses, which generally drive slowly in the city, sometimes take fast lanes to get to the technical inspection center.
“The anti-pollution control systems of buses can sometimes be over-stressed (…) and can then signal that they are seeing more particles than usual. In these cases, an intermittent orange light may come on on the dashboard.”
The RATP then asks the drivers to use the suitcase to take a new measurement and “since the bus is again running at a normal speed, the new measurement does not give any indication of a fault and the light goes out,” Mr. Brun stressed.
According to Le Parisien, “the on-board computer does not have time to relight the alerts” and “this dubious manipulation would, according to the drivers questioned, make it possible to avoid a second inspection, which is obligatory if a warning light is on during the technical inspection”.
“If the ‘fraudulent abuses’ are proven, they are totally unacceptable” and “the RATP must put an end to them immediately and punish the perpetrators”, reacted Valérie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region and the Ile-de-France transport union Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), in a message on X on Wednesday evening.
– costly immobilizations –
The method would avoid costly downtime and reduced fleet availability, which could lead to potential penalties for the public carrier, the daily claims.
Le Parisien claims to have “been able to see the operation for himself” in June and July in front of a Val-d’Oise control centre welcoming buses circulating within Paris.
The practice concerns “at least half of the twenty or so centres (bus depots, editor’s note) in Paris and the inner suburbs”, estimates Luc Wallop, former staff representative on the RATP board of directors, presented by the daily as the “whistleblower on this subject”.
“All buses are subject to rigorous maintenance and monitoring,” assures the RATP, with a technical inspection “carried out every 6 months by external centers approved by the departmental prefecture in accordance with the regulations” on heavy vehicles.
The Parisien article also reports two accidents that took place in 2020.
In both cases, “it was shown that RATP buses, vehicles, were not involved in the accidents,” according to the company spokesperson. The two employees concerned, who testify against RATP in the article, “have since been in conflict with the company” and “the links established between these testimonies and the procedures carried out by RATP in terms of technical inspection (…) are fallacious,” according to Mr. Brun.
The Paris transport authority has sent a mission to its general delegate for transport safety, who is due to submit his initial conclusions to Valérie Pécresse this weekend, before a more comprehensive report in two weeks.
© 2024 AFP
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