The Occitanie regional council has announced its support for Flexmove, an AKKA Group project, as part of the French government’s recovery plan (‘France Relance’), with the aim of speeding up the ecological transition and improving mobility in rural areas of the Region, reducing operating and maintenance costs.
Flexmove is a multimodal mobility service based on an electric vehicle that can be driven like a normal car on the road and can also travel autonomously on railways thanks to special road-to-rail technology developed by AKKA. The feasibility and the strategic value of the project within its ecosystem have been validated and recognized by the i-Trans cluster (a competitiveness cluster for sustainable multimodal and urban transportation systems) with Flexmove being awarded the i-Trans competitiveness cluster label, as announced in July 2021.
Flexmove will bring significant benefits to the Occitanie Region, thanks to its economic model which will result in lower operating costs and denser, high-quality rail service. Notably, it will allow the Region to significantly reduce the costs of maintenance and rehabilitation of rail lines by using lighter vehicles, which have a significantly lower acquisition price compared to conventional rail equipment and a very low marginal cost of circulation.
This project offers a new mobility solution adapted to both urban and rural areas, enabling the development of new projects to reopen rail infrastructures where the economic and service model of the traditional train is no longer viable.
Jean-Franck Ricci, AKKA’s Group Managing Director in charge of business development and sales, declares: ‘We’re proud to have gained the support of a key region such as Occitanie in France. Flexmove is an economically attractive transportation system that can be used in any region, creating value by leveraging under-used rail infrastructures. This partnership is an important milestone and a huge step towards further development and widespread adoption of this revolutionary mobility service.’
Source: AKKA
