When hurtling down the stairs in order to catch the metro, we often wonder how persons in difficulty manage to merely get around in the public transport network maze. In the Paris region, an association called Les Compagnons du voyage (Fellow Travellers) helps these persons go from one place to another. This support is above all meant to encourage them to become independent in the whole transport network. The association created by the RATP (Independent Parisian Transport Authority) and the SNCF (French National Railway Company) has helped over one million people for the past 17 years.

Working closely with specialised institutes

The association works mainly with persons characterised as “fragile”, according to expression used in the Borloo law for the development of a service of assistance to individuals, that is to say children under 18, disabled and elderly people.

Apart from a few exceptions such as private individuals who need some help off the cuff, the association has a true public service vocation, in the broader sense. The aim is to help the most vulnerable find their place in society or keep social ties, thanks to transport. The majority of clients in the association comes from specialised structures: “our main activity is proximity work with specialised institutes, especially for young children,” Chantal Couprie explains. These young people, who are “quietly learning”, accompanied by employees all year round on their way to and from school, constitute 60% of the activity. The remaining third of the activity concerns the work with childhood support social services.

To create that bond, about one hundred employees, mostly part-time workers, who are trained for First Aid and among whom some can sign, provide both mobility assistance and often a great deal of psychological support.

An in-house solution for carriers becoming available to the public at large

Missions mostly take place in the Paris region, using the networks of the RATP and the SNCF, the two companies that founded the association. At the beginning, the issue had brought together the two carriers as they had to face the mobility problems encountered by their own employees and their families. “The need was then clearly identified and there was this common will on the part of both carriers to improve the supply of a dedicated service”, Chantal Couprie adds.

And when this RATP employee on secondment is being questioned about accessibility improvement within the network, she praises the efforts made on that matter by the parent companies: “We observe in situ that there are more technical tools. From that point of view, both carriers wish to offer accessible spaces and equipment.”

Elsewhere in the world, this kind of approach usually comes from the authority responsible for the organisation of transport: in the Paris region, the Stif (Syndicat des Transports d’Ile-de-France: Ile-de-France Transport Union) has not taken an important part in the association’s subsidising yet but would have everything to gain in doing so. “What matters to the Stif, is that we work on the gradual learning of independence, that is to say on bringing future independent clients in the community”, Chantal Couprie admits.

Les Compagnons du voyage are currently offering an efficient and more human solution for people in difficulties until 2015, the date when the major part of public transport will have to be made accessible for disabled people. The impulse has been given but there is still a long way to go.

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Translated by Oona Bijasson

Related content : disabled person, metro, public transport