Paris ’24 leaves a golden glow – how the Olympics created a public transport blueprint
17 / 01 / 2025
The Paris 2024 Olympics transformed urban mobility. With groundbreaking technology, sustainable initiatives and advanced integration, it set a new global standard. Discover how a city – once braced for chaos – became a model for efficiency and accessibility, creating a transport legacy beyond the Games.

The build up to the Paris Olympics raised concerns that the influx of tourists and athletes would see the city’s metropolitan transport system struggle to cope. But a blend of innovative technology, integrated travel options, and ‘against the clock’ building work ensured the Games were a gold medal benchmark for other major cities, regardless of whether they are hosting major events or not.
As well as expanding its network with a new 200km metro system boasting four additional train lines and 68 new stations, seamless behind the scenes integration played a major part.
The legacy of such a ‘triomphe’ – supported by sustainable thinking around bold cycling initiatives – will be a hassle-free flexible system of which Parisians can be proud.
Friction-free experience
Moving an estimated 11 million visitors around different venues at peak times was always going to be a challenge, with long queues of tourists buying and validating paper tickets.
Ile-de-France Mobilites’ (IDFM) mobile-first approach, delivered by a group led by Worldline, enabled the digitalisation of Navigo cards on Android & iOS smartphones for a friction-free customer experience with the support of transit fare media on iOS. In September 2024 alone, 2.6 million tickets were purchased through the system — marking a doubling of sales compared to the first half of the year, as visitors embraced the digital solution. .
Every month, over 30% of residents in Île-de-France now buy their monthly pass remotely. During the Olympic Games, a remarkable 36% of purchases for the special Olympic visitor pass were completed via smartphone, effectively relieving congestion at stations and ticket counters, as evidenced by the 410,000 customers who bypassed waiting in lines during those busy weeks.
Seamless communication
That type of seamless communication was pivotal to the success in Paris which could be seen as a blueprint for how transformative transport initiatives are viewed in the future.
Their ‘end to end journey’ strategy was built around an expansion of bike-sharing programmes and 60km of segregated lanes for the 2024 Olympics – 11.2% of trips within Paris are now made by bicycle – supporting the Paris Olympics’ eco-friendly objectives.
Bike racks installed on buses, secure bike parking at train stations and dedicated bike lanes segregated from cars made it increasingly practical for commuters to integrate cycling into their daily routine.
One cohesive network and system
“The next step of the seamless travel experience was brought to life by IDFM’s system, which is capable of processing hundreds of thousands of transactions an hour and has been a catalyst for new user accounts to soar during the summer, to multi-millions by the end of September.”
This is proof that a comprehensive, on-demand mobility service accessed through a single application and payment channel represents the future brought forward to today.
That it was achieved to world class standard during the Olympic fortnight was testament to the collaboration, coordination and the shared will of government agencies, transport operators and private stakeholders.
It worked thanks to regular communication with the Ile-de-France region residents who make 2.6 billion public transport journeys every year. Updates on how to sign up, transport options, schedules and changes played a key role in smooth operations.
The vision of a fully integrated Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) solution, where payments across multiple modes of public transport—including buses, trams, metro, river shuttles, regional trains and other alternative mobility services—can be managed within one cohesive network, is an exciting prospect for enhancing urban mobility. Such integration has the potential to significantly improve the customer experience and simplify access through an intuitive payment system.
Crunching the numbers and trends
The numbers retrieved by IDFM dynamically and post event around visitor flow at peak times will help build a compelling picture of demand that will help shape transport management going forward.
On a lesser scale the benefits of a ‘one-for-all’ system weren’t lost on the Paris 2024 organising committee either. They launched a daily Olympic Pass offering unlimited travel to all venues via a dedicated app or at train stations and ticket machines.
This solution, albeit temporary, shone a light on the pulling power of accessibility and convenience for local and international visitors that Worldline believes should be the cornerstone of all travel.
Social mobility and freedom are the winners
Now its race has run, the Paris Olympics offers tangible proof that investment in infrastructure and technology to make transport as easy as possible for customers leaves a powerful legacy and blueprint for sustainable urban transportation.
Increased social mobility, better quality of life and lower carbon emissions all got on the winner’s podium at these Olympics… so Vive la France and la révolution des transports!