What are the daily galleys of a million RER B travelers worth, faced with numerous breakdowns and train delays, compared to the three hours of happiness that Indochina fans will know, on May 21, at the Stade de France? Not much obviously, if we stick to the decision taken by the government, a fortnight ago, to postpone major modernization and regeneration work on the rail network, which had been planned for a long time this weekend. -end there, to maintain the rock concert.
Daily transport, however, seemed to have become a priority for the executive since Elisabeth Borne, then Minister of Transport, decided in 2019 to postpone the commissioning of the Charles-de-Gaulle Express, the Paris-Roissy link. to 2 billion euros, after 2024, and to no longer make the Olympic Games the date before which everything must happen. Believing that it was possible to carry out such a project in record time while continuing the essential renovation of the northern axis, the busiest rail line in Europe, without affecting passengers was simply not realistic. .
The dilemma that Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, Elisabeth Borne’s successor in transport, has just been faced with, also concerns the northern axis, and particularly the RER B. But this time, the decision seemed a priori easier to decide: it it was a question of arbitrating between the Parisian date of an artist’s tour and the SNCF Réseau schedule, which, due to the complexity of the work, is decided almost three years in advance. But in a letter sent at the end of January to Luc Lallemand, the boss of SNCF Réseau, the Minister of Transport “wants to attract specifically” the latter’s attention to the Indochina concert in May, and asks that, that evening, traffic on the RER be fully maintained. It is therefore implied that the planned catenary regeneration work will be postponed – this work, he explains, having no direct impact on the CDG Express schedule.
The health crisis, as well as a court decision handed down at the end of 2020 having suspended the work of the CDG Express for several months, had already come to shake up agendas set to the millimeter. First of all, it was necessary to reschedule the concerts and sports meetings canceled by the Covid-19. And, on the side of SNCF Réseau, because of this decision of the administrative court, to review the schedule of night and weekend works. The latter presented two scenarios in the summer of 2021; and it is the accelerated version that the State has favored, so that the future direct Paris-Roissy, “the train of the rich”, as its detractors call it, be put into service no later than 2026. Result: in 2022 and 2023, a series of major interventions are scheduled at night and on weekends on the RER B.
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