Modalis: Nouvelle-Aquitaine Mobilités’ single gateway to regional transport

| minute read

Nouvelle-Aquitaine Mobilités (NAM) partnered with Sopra Steria to transform the traveller experience through a unified transport hub. A technical, functional and operational challenge – with its complexity lying in the rich mix of stakeholders, networks and digital solutions to bring together.

Founded in 2018, Nouvelle-Aquitaine Mobilités (NAM) is the regional transport authority for France’s largest region, home to six million people. NAM brings together 34 local authorities and more than 40 transport networks around a shared mission: to coordinate, streamline and shape sustainable mobility across the entire region. The aim is to tackle not only climate and energy concerns, but also to promote alternatives to solo car use, which continues to clog road networks.

To encourage a shift in travel modes and support eco-mobility, NAM launched a large-scale consultation in 2022. The objective: to implement a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platform offering users a single, simplified point of access to all transport services in the region. The platform integrates urban transport (buses and trams), interurban travel (coaches, regional trains) and complementary modes such as bike-sharing, on-demand transport and carpooling. Sopra Steria was selected to design, integrate and deploy the solution.

Simplifying access to multimodal mobility

Thanks to their strong expertise in the transport sector, Sopra Steria – working alongside other partners – developed the technical architecture that enabled NAM to launch this next-generation integrated digital mobility solution in 2023. Marketed under the brand Modalis, the platform delivers a seamless end-to-end passenger experience – from route planning to purchasing a single multimodal ticket that allows users to take a bus, transfer to a train and unlock a bike at the station. Physical equipment for ticket validation and inspection throughout the journey further contribute to this smooth experience. 

The idea is to offer a seamless mobility experience: to acquire a single ticket that gives access to the bus, the train, and then the bike service at the station — all with one card: the Modalis card.

Jérôme Kravetz

Director General of Services, Nouvelle-Aquitaine Mobilités

Meeting the challenge of a diverse ecosystem

As a mobility integrator, Sopra Steria was involved from the early stages. The company supported NAM in designing the user experience, selecting the platform’s technological building blocks and defining the overall functional architecture. Sopra Steria then co-led the full end-to-end integration alongside NAM’s teams. One of the most complex and essential tasks was to coordinate the various providers’ solutions while ensuring the user experience remained as fluid as possible. Other key priorities included safeguarding data integrity, regulatory compliance (GDPR), and system-wide cybersecurity.

A major challenge of this digital transformation was enabling interoperability across diverse networks. Some already had ticketing systems that had to be made compatible with Modalis, while others had none at all. A comprehensive, multi-level integration strategy was therefore essential. This was especially important as regional platforms are expected to gradually extend to neighboring networks, requiring interoperability at interregional, national and even European levels from the outset. 

In the retail sector, Sopra Steria also stands ready to support NAM as regional lines open to competition.

Integrator expertise: a key to MaaS success

By 2023, just a year after the consultation was launched, the first Modalis transport tickets were already being sold on connected networks. A critical success factor for NAM was selecting committed, expert partners and establishing a strong, collaborative partnership. Sopra Steria played a central role in deploying MaaS, maintaining neutrality among the stakeholders and keeping NAM’s interests at the forefront.

Two major next steps lie ahead – primarily administrative and contractual, as the technology is already in place: integrating the last remaining networks and supporting the upcoming liberalization of regional rail services. All these advances are now made possible by technology.

The challenges of regional mobility are many: regional express services, multimodal networks, hubs, carpooling, etc. An integrated mobility system that is accessible to all across the entire regional territory — and beyond — is undoubtedly a key solution to the congestion affecting urban and peri-urban road networks.

Thierry Gohon

Director of Territorial Mobility, Sopra Steria