Voguéo was a water taxi service operated on the rivers Seine and the Marne in the Île-de-France (the area around Paris).

It started on 28 June 2008 between the Gare d'Austerlitz in the 13th arrondissement of Paris and the École Vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort Métro station.

Water taxis on the Seine operated for many years, but were rapidly made redundant at the start of the 20th century with the development of rail transport.

Until 1828, with the creation of horse-drawn buses,[Note 1] passenger river traffic was the only mode of public transport in the Île-de-France.

Until the canal excavations around the river and the creation of locks downstream to Rouen under the reign of Louis-Philippe I, most of the traffic travelled upstream from Paris.

[2] Under the Second French Empire, the river navigation was reorganised, and reinforced for the 1867 Éxposition Universelle, which took place on the Champ de Mars, Paris.

[3] Several companies swiftly followed: in 1876 the Compagnie des Hirondelles Parisiennes operated eighteen pontoons, twelve of them in Paris.

[2] River traffic reached its zenith during the Exposition Universelle of 1900 with 42 million passengers, but after 1900 the service quickly declined with the evolution of the electric tramways and the opening of the Paris Métro dealt a fatal blow.

But the decline then continued, and steepened with competition from the quicker railways, and so in 1926 it was decided to suspend winter services, from 1 November to 1 March.

Since then the Seine, in Paris, saw only merchant traffic, and a few pleasure boats, until the 1950s, when the first private tourist service opened, with old units restored and adapted.

Also, its hours of operation was not suited to commuters, in the morning it started at 10am in the tourist season, and in the winter, the last boat left at 4pm.

The canal boats were 14.5 metres (48 ft) long, made by Alternatives Énergies by a company titled Vedettes de Paris, who later merged with Transdev.

The report of the STIF of 11 July 2007 called officially for an experimental riverboat system along the Seine, integrated into the Metro and other transport networks.

Each month the passenger numbers were looked over and tweaks to the service made (travel times, connections, prices and so on), with questionnaires to the customers about comfort, tidiness, timeliness and so on.

All in all, the service was perhaps a little too infrequent and unreliable, especially during the winter, both commuters being put off by the wind and rain, and the boats themselves being slower and less comfortable.

After 15 minutes of travel from its base, it reached the second stop at the twin Nelson Mandela Bridges which connect the communes of Ivry-sur-Seine and Charenton-le-Pont via the D154 autoroute.

Passing the confluence of the Seine and Marne, Voguéo reached its terminus at the École vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort in Charenton-le-Pont after a thirty-minute ride.

[18] Going in the opposite direction, the boat stopped at the Parc de Bercy,[19] on the right bank of the Seine, offering easy access to the BnF library.

[23] The chosen route went through the western Paris suburbs, , connecting with the RATP bus services 20–99 and Paris Métro lines 5, 8, 10 and 14, and also the suburban line RER C. The STIF ordered four catamarans to serve the route, designed by the Yacht Concept company, although they were delivered six months late .

[24] The boats kept to the IRIS 37 design, with modifications demanded by STIF, in particular enlargement of the bay windows, changes to the seating and the stern open back.

The two naval architects Michel Joubert and Franck Darnet, designed these boats, being 12.30 by 5.20 m (40.4 by 17.1 ft) and sitting 1.20 m (47 in) in the water.

[24] All of this was underwritten by the Compagnie des Batobus, but because the ticket prices were set by the STIF there as no way it could make a profit or cover its costs.

The STIF paid the difference, to the Île-de-France regional council, and several other local bodies, who had set the terms and conditions for a cross-river ferry service, which it never really was designed to be.

[29] The Voguéo experiment was deemed a success, but even before it had started extensions were proposed as far as Vitry-sur-Seine to the south and Suresnes to the west, with the Autorité de la concurrence making reports and requests to the STIF.

[32] The local council, on 28 January 2008, asked the STIF to start a study of the many different ways this may be possible, on the model of the Voguéo, between Suresnes and Clichy and the towns southwards of it, via La Défense.