The Paris transportation network is very diverse and exists literally over many levels. The city's buses, trams, Métro, Autoroutes, trains and planes together all serve to maintain a high level of connectivity between Paris's many different districts and beyond.
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Paris is well-known for the non-uniformity of its map. This seemingly haphazard arrangement of streets, alleys, squares, boulevards, and avenues is a result of a superimposition of one street plan upon an earlier other.
As with the birth of most agglomerations, a first network of streets was formed by the built-up areas around paths, roadways and places of trade, and a second formed when land surrounding these was divided and sold for building - in the French tradition, a plot of land was usually divided in a series of long and narrow parallel plots extending to both sides of a central lateral strip reserved for a passage across it. Very rarely was a street planned in advance.
A few exceptions aside, Paris' growth remained true to this schema (for over eight hundred years) until the mid-19th century city renovations by Baron Haussmann involved the demolition of entire quarters to make way for a network of new boulevards and avenues that make much of Paris today. Many of the city's winding and narrow streets still remain, but one must search through the quarters behind the avenues to find them.
The 1970s city-limit-hugging circular Périphérique expressway was the first real change since the above, as were narrow expressways along the quays of the Seine river and a few inner-city underground passages. It is not the map of the streets that is changing most these days, but the streets themselves: a recent movement towards prioritising public transportation systems and eliminating "through-city" traffic has created barricaded bus/taxi/cyclist alleys, narrowing the passages reserved for automobiles and delivery vehicles. Although reducing traffic flow within the city itself, this traffic is often redistributed to the Capital's gateway thoroughfares.
Cycling is a popular mode of transportation in Paris. The Vélib' bike hire scheme was introduced in the middle of 2007 with over 20,000 bicycles available at hire points throughout the city.
The horse-drawn omnibus became Paris' first form of public transportation from 1828. The horse-drawn tramway was next to appear from 1871; as for motorised transport, steam-driven trams appeared from 1880 before being replaced by the electric tramway from 1888. The first attempt at local rail transportation appeared when the Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture was open to passengers from 1875, but was outmoded in favour of the métro (the first porte de Vincennes-porte de Maillot line) appearing from 19 July 1900. From 1905 the tramway began to disappear in favour of the motor-driven bus, but the tram has begun very recently to make a reappearance around Paris. For a more complete history of Paris' various forms of public transport, please see Paris Public Transport.
The Metro and Tramway, most of the Bus and a few sections of the RER are run by the RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens), the government-subsidised company whose jurisdiction covers all transport touching the Parisian Capital. The rest of the RER, as well as the Transilien, are run by the SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français), the state-owned train company whose rail network covers all of France.
One hundred years after its initiation, Paris's métro has 14 lines (not including two shorter navette lines and the Montmartre funicular), and 12 of these penetrate well into the surrounding suburbs (as two, lines 2 and 6, form a circle within Paris). Most lines cross the city diametrically and only the above-mentioned inner-city circular lines serve as a unique lateral interconnection.
Navigating from point A to point B involves connecting the metro lines together and determining the direction on each line. The direction is most often given using the last station names. So for each stop/transfer you should note the metro line number and the end station name(s)
The RER (réseau express régional) is a network of large-calibre regional trains that run far into the suburbs of Paris, with fewer stops within the city itself. From its first line A in 1977 it has grown into a network of five lines, A, B, C, D and E: three (A, B, and D) pass through Paris' largest and most central Châtelet-Les-Halles metro station. Line C occupies the path of former railways along the Seine's Rive Gauche quays, and the most recently-built line E leaves Paris' gare Saint-Lazare train station for destinations to Paris' north-east.
These are suburban train lines connecting Paris' main stations to the suburbs not reached by the RER. The Transilien lines are named as a play-on-words for the "transit" of "Franciliens," inhabitants of the "Île-de-France" région of which Paris is the capital.
All of Paris' tramways had stopped running by 1957, but this mode of transport has begun to return to the Parisian scenery in recent years. Beginning in 1992, two lines (the T1 and T2) were built parallel to the outer boundaries of the capital. The T3 line, opened in 2006, occupies a grassy track running alongside most of Paris' Left Bank boundary.
Paris' bus lines are its most developed form of transport, interconnecting all points of the capital and its closest suburban cities. There are a total of 58 bus lines operating in Paris that have a terminus within city limits.
The capital's bus system has been given a major boost over the past decade. Beginning in early 2000, Paris' major arteries have been thinned to reserve an express lane reserved only for bus and taxi, usually designated with signs and road markings. More recently, these bus lanes have been isolated from the rest of regular circulation through low concrete barriers that form "couloirs" and prevent all other forms of Paris circulation from even temporarily entering them.
Paris's first "embarcadère" train station, the predecessor to the gare Saint-Lazare, appeared from 1837 as a home for the novelty Paris-à-Saint-Germain local line. Over the next ten years France's developing rail network would give Paris five (including the Saint-Lazare station) national railway stations and two suburban lines, and from 1848 Paris would become the designated centre of an "Étoile" (star) spider-web of rail with reaches to (and through) all of France's borders. This pattern is still very visible in France's modern railway map.
As far as national and European destinations are concerned, rail transport is beginning to outdistance air travel in both travel time and efficiency. The still-developing SNCF's TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) network, since its birth in 1981, brings France's most southerly Marseille only 3 hours from the capital. A train similar to the TGV, the Eurostar, has been connecting Paris to central London through 2h 15 of rail since 1994, and in the opposite direction, the Thalys line connects Brussels through 1h22 of rail with up to 26 departures/day, Amsterdam in 3h18 with up to 10 departures/day, Cologne in 3h14, with up to 6 departures/day .
Paris had its first airport in the fields of Issy-les-Moulineaux (just to the southern limits of Paris by its Seine river's Left Bank) from the first aviation trials of 1908. Aviation became a serious mode of transport during the course of the first world war, which in 1915 led to the installation of a larger and more permanent runway installation near the town of Le Bourget to the north of Paris. A yet larger airport to the south of the Capital, Orly International Airport, began welcoming flights from 1945, and yet another airport to the north of the City, Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, opened its gates from 1974.
Today the former airfields of Issy-les-Moulineaux have become a Heliport annex of Paris, and Le Bourget an airfield reserved for smaller aircraft. Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle takes the majority of international flights to and from Paris, and Orly is a host to mostly domestic and European airline companies.
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