Noctilien

Noctilien is the night bus service in Paris and its agglomeration. It is managed by the Île-de-France Mobilités (formerly the STIF), the Île-de-France regional public transit authority, and operated by RATP (with 32 lines) and Transilien SNCF (with 21 lines).

It replaced the previous Noctambus service on the night of 20/21 September 2005, providing for a larger number of lines than before and claiming to be better adapted to night-time transport needs.

In place of the previous hub-and-spoke scheme in which all buses terminated at and departed from the heart of Paris at Châtelet , Noctilien's new service includes buses operating between banlieues (the communes surrounding Paris proper) as well as outbound lines running from Paris' four main railway stations: Gare de l'Est, Gare de Lyon, Gare Montparnasse and Gare Saint-Lazare. In addition, these four stations are also connected to each other by a regular night bus service.

Noctilien operates 53 bus lines over the whole of Paris and the Île-de-France region from around 12:30 a.m. when the rail network and the regular daytime bus service ends, until around 05:30 the next morning when they resume service.

It is made up of:

• 2 circular lines: N01 & N02 running between Paris' major train stations;
• 6 transversal lines: from N11 to N16 running between different suburbs of Paris via its center at Châtelet ;
• 21 radial lines (the other 2 digits lines, except N71) running between major Paris stations and more or less its near suburbs;
• 2 radial long-distance lines: N122 & N153 (subcontracted by the RATP) running between Paris and its remote suburbs;
• 20 radial long-distance lines (the other 3 digits lines, except N135) running between Paris and its remote suburbs (with often a partly motorway route) and managed by the Transilien SNCF;
• 2 ring lines in the suburbs: N71 by RATP & N135 by Transilien SNCF.

Like Transilien, the name "Noctilien" is formed by analogy with "Francilien" — the French demonym for residents of Île-de-France.