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37


First gear T


he engines have been warm- ing up at Reolian for a couple of months already as the new public


bus operator prepares to start operating on August 1. You can already see the company’s green buses around town on training runs. General manager Cedric Rigaud is


sure the bus operator will “show its capa- bility to improve the service level” from


as an environmental consultant in the motor industry. Veolia Transport, a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement, created a 50-50 joint venture


In the driver’s seat C


with RATP Développement in 2009 to bid for urban transport contracts in Asia. The resulting company was Veolia Transport RATP, one of two shareholders in Reolian. Mr Rigaud says his background meant that joining Reolian “made sense for me”. “It


made me dream at the time,” he says. “It still makes me dream.” He has been in Asia for two years. Before becoming Reolian’s general manager


in Macau, Mr Rigaud was in charge of the business development of bus services in Shanghai.


S.F.


since it  rst bid to run bus services, in November 2009. First, Reolian was deprived by


Public bus operator Reolian hits the road next month and although the company faces speed bumps, general manager Cedric Rigaud has an optimistic outlook BY SARA FARR


day one. He says Reolian will “deliver better services in quicker time” than es- tablished bus operators Macau Urban Transportation (Transmac) and Macau Collective Transportation (TCM). If it can do so, it will be a double


achievement for Reolian, a joint ven- ture between France’s Veolia Transport RATP and Macau’s H. Nolasco Group. The company has endured a bumpy ride


edric Rigaud has worked with French multinational Veolia Environnement for more than 10 years, starting as a specialist in waste management. Before that he worked


the government of almost one third of the routes it was initially granted, in- stead being given to TCM. This was the Transport Bureau’s solution to the problem of a series of TCM lawsuits contesting its exclusion from the public bus service tender. TCM had allegedly delivered its bid four minutes late. More recently, Reolian attracted


media attention when it said it was hav- ing dif culty in hiring enough bus driv- ers. “Macau is facing a shortage of la- bour, not since Reolian arrived, but of course it got worse with the booming of the economy,” Mr Rigaud says. Public bus operators must compete


for drivers not only against each other, but also against tour operators and ca- sinos, which boast huge shuttle  eets. There are 2.5 coaches for each public bus in Macau. Many of the drivers are middle-aged and do not fancy quitting their jobs to move to a new set-up.


Truckloads of trainees “So we wanted to  nd solutions at the time and one of the solutions was to put more effort into training,” says Mr Rigaud. The idea was for the Labour Af- fairs Bureau to devise special training programmes so that holders of licences to drive a truck could get licences to drive


JULY 2011


Photo: Carmo Correia


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