A consortium led by France’s Colas Group has been selected to finance, build and operate a €135m bus rapid transit (BRT) network in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana.
Project company Ibys will create two BRT lines with a total length of 10.1km to serve 21 stations linking districts in the city such as the Andrée-Rosemon Hospital and the University of French Guiana.
Ibys is comprised of Colas Projects, Ribal Travaux Publics, a Colas Group company in French Guiana, and FIDEPPP2 investment fund.
The public-private partnership (P3) contract, awarded by the local government on 20 December, sees Ribal Travaux Publics Ribal TP maintaining the two lines over 30 years for €45m.
Colas said the design-build consortium will also build a park-and-ride lot, two multimodal interchange hubs, and a maintenance and storage centre.Â
It will also redevelop some adjacent public spaces to bolster urban regeneration in Cayenne.
The network will be operational by mid-2023, after a period of 42 months of studies and construction work.
The scheme will be financed by a combination of equity provided by Colas and FIDEPPP2, debt provided by Rivage, an institutional investor, and public funding provided by the local government, France and the European Union.
Over the past five years, Colas has won numerous BRT design-build contracts in France and in the French Overseas zones, including in Lens, Bayonne, Saint-Brieuc, Pau, Rouen, Lorient, Nouméa, Le Lamentin, Fort-de-France.
The Cayenne BRT was the second major P3 infrastructure contract won by the Colas Group in 2019, in the wake of Liège Belgium Tramway, signed in January.
Image: Artist’s impression of the bus rapid transit system in operation (Colas Group)
