SAFEGE


SAFEGE is a French consulting and engineering firm, founded as a consortium of 25 companies including Michelin and Renault. The name is an acronym for Société Anonyme Française d'Etude de Gestion et d'Entreprises.
SAFEGE was originally founded in 1919 as Société Auxiliaire Française d'Électricité, Gaz et Eau, a holding company with interests in private water, gas, and electricity production and distribution. Following the nationalization of these public utilities in 1947, the company was reorganized as an engineering and consulting firm.
Today, SAFEGE operates as a subsidiary of Suez, specializing in water and environmental engineering. The majority of its business activity—around 60% of turnover—is based in France.

SAFEGE type monorail

The SAFEGE consortium developed a type of suspension railway technology in the late 1950s. The design team was headed by engineer Lucien Chadenson.
The system was conceived as a potential extension of the Paris Métro, intended to connect Charenton to Créteil, southeast of Paris. Construction of a full-scale test track began in April 1959 and was completed in April 1960. Testing continued until 1967. The test track appeared prominently in the 1966 film Fahrenheit 451. It was demolished between 1970 and 1971, though at least one prototype vehicle was preserved for some years afterward.
The SAFEGE system adapted the rubber-tired bogie used on the Paris Métro by mounting it inside a hollow steel box girder from which passenger cars were suspended. The bogies ran along the interior of the enclosed beam, with a narrow slot along the underside allowing suspension arms to connect to the cars below. The cars were mounted on a pendulum-type suspension with pneumatic springs, providing stability and comfort at higher speeds. As on the Paris Métro, steel emergency wheels were fitted alongside the tires in case of deflation.
Enclosing the running gear protected it from rain, ice, and snow, addressing a major limitation of earlier rubber-tired metro systems and suspended monorails such as the Wuppertal Schwebebahn in Germany.

SAFEGE-type monorails in the world

Although the SAFEGE system gained international attention for its innovative enclosed-beam design, only a few such systems were built, compared with the more widely adopted ALWEG-type straddle-beam monorails. Despite its French origins, no SAFEGE systems were constructed in France. In Japan, however, two suspended monorails based on the SAFEGE design were successfully built and remain in operation. The German company Siemens later developed a smaller-scale suspended monorail system inspired by the SAFEGE concept.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

of Japan licensed the suspended railway technology from SAFEGE and developed three installations, two of which remain in operation.
developed a suspended railway technology known as the H-Bahn or SIPEM for SIemens PEople Mover in the early 1970s.Although it employs a similar enclosed box-girder track to the SAFEGE system, it was not directly licensed from SAFEGE and incorporates several technical differences. Siemens built two such installations, both of which remain in operation. While Siemens no longer actively markets the system, it continues to supply software for the automated operation of existing SIPEM networks and vehicles.
In 1966, a proposal was considered to construct a SAFEGE-type monorail in Manchester, England. The line was planned to link Manchester Airport with the city centre and suburbs, including a tunnel beneath the central area. The project, along with the Picc-Vic tunnel proposal for a conventional underground line, was abandoned due to cost. Manchester later developed the Metrolink, a light rail network, one line of which, opened in 2014, now connects Manchester Airport to the city centre.
In November 1967, General Electric proposed constructing a SAFEGE-type monorail linking downtown San Francisco with San Francisco International Airport. The proposal was studied by the City of San Francisco alongside alternatives, including an extension of the Southern Pacific Railroad's Peninsula Commute service and an extension of the BART rapid transit system. Concerns about incompatibility with other rail systems, the visual impact of an elevated structure, and potential competition with existing and planned rapid transit lines led to the proposal's rejection in favor of a BART extension. SFO was ultimately connected to downtown San Francisco by BART in 2003.