Health, Safety and Security: a full-time priority for Keolis across its worldwide operations

From 14 to 18 June 2021, Keolis subsidiaries around the world are showcasing the Group’s commitment to ensuring the health, safety and security of its staff, passengers and the public.

Throughout the week, training sessions and webinars are being held to raise awareness on issues including operational and passenger safety, preventing sexual harassment, sanitary safety and mental health. This week also allows the networks to highlight the numerous initiatives deployed in the field throughout the year and constitute best practices to share at Group level.

Keolis deploys a continuous safety improvement program across all its networks which is based on a highly demanding set of common standards. This policy, which aims to achieve zero accidents, is based on action plans adapted to each network, team training and numerous awareness-raising initiatives aimed at the general public, not just passengers. In Bordeaux, for example, our subsidiary has been running a campaign since 2017 to prevent the risk of pedestrian accidents with streetcars on the public highway. In France, many networks are also carrying out initiatives aimed at schoolchildren to teach them about bus safety (behavior, wearing seatbelts, etc.).

In September 2020, the Group signed a partnership convention with the French national police force to strengthen their cooperation in the fight against offences and incivilities in Keolis’ networks. Since then, many networks have adapted the convention to their networks, like TBM in Bordeaux. In Lyon, TCL, the SYTRAL and the Rhone prefect signed the new Regional safety and delinquency strategy in March 2021 which will see the extension of the real-time video protection system with the installation of 1,600 cameras across the Lyon metro network by 2024. In Lyon still, teams from TCL and the SYTRAL have also worked with women ambassador passengers to test walking routes to understand issues and identify effective responses to reduce insecurity and to improve travel conditions for women on the networks.

Since the beginning of the health crisis, the Group and all its subsidiaries have deployed multiple measures to preserve the health of their passengers and collaborators including adapting timetables to reduce crowding, deep cleaning of the vehicles and stations, installing hand sanitation points, passenger information campaigns to promote mask-wearing and safe behaviour and offering contactless payment solutions for tickets. Initiatives were also carried out locally to support health services in managing the crisis like in France’s Vendée department where Keolis Santé rolled out a Mobile Teleconsultation Unit to relieve pressure on hospitals and enable isolated populations to receive effective medical consultations from inside our next to their homes. In Tours, Keolis and Tours Métropole Val de Loire supported the vaccine campaign deployment with a special on-demand transport service connecting remote areas to vaccination centres offered by the Fil Bleu network for elderly citizens.