To cope with the rush of visitors for the Olympic Games that get underway in Paris next year, the city officials are planning to hike local transport prices for the duration of the Games.

Coinciding with the Olympic Games 2024 that will be organised in Paris next summer, metro ticket prices in the French capital will almost double during the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

According to the city officials, a single metro ticket will increase from EUR 2.10 to EUR 4. The hike will kick in on July 8, 2024 and last September 8, a few days either side of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

President of the Île-de-France region, the national capital region, Valérie Pécresse says that the temporary hike is a fair price. She adds that the price increase will only impact visitors to the city, with residents’ monthly and yearly metro passes unaffected. “During the Olympics and the Paralympics, the Ile de France region will dramatically increase its transport offer. It is out of question that the residents support that cost,’’ Pecresse says.

“We are going to create a new pass, the Paris 2024 pass, that will allow visitors to travel through the whole Ile de France region. It will cost EUR 16 a day, and up to EUR 70 a week,” she adds.

She also recommends that Parisians without monthly or annual passes should stock up on tickets ahead of the July 20 surcharge. The city of Paris is aiming to make the 2024 Games the greenest in history, and there is a concerted focus on promoting the use of public transport for travelling to competition venues.

All sites are set to be accessible via a combination of metro, trains, buses, taxis and trams, with public transport reinforced to take up to 500,000 spectators per day during the Olympics, and up to 300,000 for the Paralympics.

However, Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, warned last week that public transport may be unable to cope with the demand during the Games. Metro operator RATP has also launched translation service Tradivia, which will be used by staff across the network’s stations to translate spoken queries and provide responses back to the visitor in their language. The app is capable of translating 16 languages. The Olympics will take place from July 26 until August 11, followed by the Paralympics from August 28 until September 8.