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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

New website launched to help Parisians avoid Olympics travel headaches

Paris will be even busier than normal when the Olympic and Paralympic Games come to town in the summer – so the French Transport Ministry has set up a website aimed at helping locals avoid queues, delays and price hikes.

Published: 2 February 2024 16:22 CET
New website launched to help Parisians avoid Olympics travel headaches
The 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games are coming to Paris... (Photo by Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP)

France’s Ministry of Transport has launched a website – anticiperlesjeux.gouv.fr – offering practical advice to Paris residents and businesses on dealing with the daily rush of people during the games.

The Olympic Games’ opening ceremony is on Friday, July 26th – though a few events start before then – and events take place until Sunday, August 11th, while the Paralympic Games run from August 28th to September 8th.

The aim of the website is to help individuals, and businesses anticipate their travel needs, and organise their business activities and those of their employees as effectively as possible.

READ ALSO Hotels, tickets and scams: What to know about visiting Paris for the 2024 Olympics

The website includes interactive maps of likely impacts on public transport and roads in Île-de-France, based on information provided by Île-de-France Mobilités. 

The maps allows users to view safety perimeters of competition sites and traffic forecasts by line and station (metro, RER, train, trams), on a daily basis and in real time (by specifying the place, date and time of your journey), with suggested alternative routes.

A total 25 of the 35 event sites for the Games are in Île-de-France: 13 in Paris and 12 in the surrounding area: departments of Seine-Saint-Denis, Hauts-de-Seine, Yvelines and Seine-et-Marne.

The other cities hosting competitions are: Bordeaux, Châteauroux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Saint-Étienne and Tahiti.

READ ALSO Tickets, fan zones and Airbnb: Your 5-minute guide to the 2024 Paris Olympics

In total, some 800,000 daily visitors are expected to travel to and from Olympic sites during the competitions. 

Ticket prices for Paris Metros, buses and RER trains are set to almost double during the 2024 Olympic Games and Paralympics, while a single ticket from the city centre to either the Roissy Charles de Gaulle or Orly airports will increase by €5 to a whopping €16, during the Games’ period.

Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) has called on residents who only use the region’s public transport sporadically to “purchase transport tickets before July 20th”. On top of saving money, you would also save time, as long queues during the Olympic period can be expected.

READ ALSO How Paris residents can avoid public transport price hikes during 2024 Olympics

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PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS

Paris Olympics organisers deny athletes’ beds are ‘anti-sex’

They may be made of cardboard, but the beds at the athletes' village for this year's Paris Olympics have been chosen for their environmental credentials, not to prevent competitors having sex, organisers said.

Published: 18 May 2024 13:19 CEST
Paris Olympics organisers deny athletes' beds are 'anti-sex'

The clarification came after fresh reports that the beds, manufactured by Japanese company Airweave and already used during the Tokyo 2020 Games, were to deter athletes from jumping under the covers together in the City of Love.

“We know the media has had a lot of fun with this story since Tokyo 2020, but for Paris 2024 the choice of these beds for the Olympic and Paralympic Village is primarily linked to a wider ambition to ensure minimal environmental impact and a second life for all equipment,” a spokesman for the Paris Games told AFP.

The bed bases are made from recycled cardboard, but during a demonstration in July last year Airweave founder Motokuni Takaoka jumped on one of them and stressed that they “can support several people on top”.

The Paris Games spokesman underlined that “the quality of the furniture has been rigorously tested to ensure it is robust, comfortable and appropriate for all the athletes who will use it, and who span a very broad range of body types – from gymnasts to judokas”.

The fully modular Airweave beds can be customised to accommodate long and large body sizes, with the mattresses — made out of resin fibre — available with different firmness levels.

After the Games, the bed frames will be recycled while the mattresses and pillows will be donated to schools or associations.

Athletes will sleep in single beds, two or three to a room, in the village, a newly built complex close to the main athletics stadium in a northern suburb of the capital.

A report this week in the New York Post tabloid entitled “‘Anti-sex’ beds have arrived at Paris Olympics” was reported by other media and widely circulated on social media.

Similar claims went viral before the Tokyo Olympics, sometimes fanned by athletes themselves.

To debunk them, Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan filmed a video of himself jumping repeatedly on a bed to demonstrate their solidity.

At those Games, during the coronavirus pandemic, organisers, however, urged athletes to “avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact”.

In March, Laurent Dalard, in charge of first aid and health services at Paris 2024, said around 200,000 condoms for men and 20,000 for women will be made available at the athletes’ village during the Games.

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