After the disastrous organization near the Stade de France for the final of the Champions League, on May 28, the SNCF and the RATP explained themselves this Tuesday before the Senate.
During the hearing, the SNCF indicated that it had not been alerted when the large flow of supporters from the RER D, which it operates, caused congestion at the gates of the stadium in Saint-Denis. “We have had no alert on the subject of ‘there are problems, we are no longer absorbing, so hold the RER D'”, explained Sylvie Charles, director of Transilien (the branch of the SNCF in charge of trains from the Parisian suburbs). However, its services transmitted every half hour to the organizers the number of supporters counted at the exit of the two RER stations serving the stadium, on lines B and D, she noted.
The SNCF counted 37,000 people, “more than three times what we usually have” on the RER D, and 6,200, “a third of what we usually have”, on the RER B. Traffic of the RER B having been affected by a strike of the RATP agents, many supporters reported on line D. And the filtering devices on arrival at the stadium were overwhelmed.
In this regard, RATP Deputy Director General Philippe Martin noted that a meeting with the authorities and organizers on May 24 “clearly specified the transport plan (and) clearly indicated that we were going to postpone part of flows from line B to line D”. “There was an AFP dispatch on May 26 which clearly indicates that the RATP invites travelers to use line D as a priority,” he added, noting that a new “situation update” had been made with the French Football Federation on May 27, the day before the match.
“Surprised” by the statements of the FFF
Philippe Martin also said he was “a little surprised at the statements of the French Football Federation”. Its director of institutional affairs, Erwan Le Prévost, had indeed denounced the lack of information from the RATP, during a previous hearing in the Senate, on June 9. “If we had had real-time information on the diversion of flows from RER B to RER D, we could have redesigned our system at the start of the afternoon. The prefecture did not have the information either,” he said.
The representatives of the RATP and the SNCF underlined that their competence stopped at the gates of their stations, and that there had been no major incident in their area despite the high attendance. Sylvie Charles, however, reported a post-match brawl in Saint-Denis and the start of a stampede in La Plaine-Saint-Denis, as well as the presence of pickpockets.
CCTV footage also destroyed
Asked about the CCTV images recorded on their networks on the evening of May 28, the representatives of the two carriers noted that they were not claimed by the courts until Friday June 10. Too late for the RATP, which made them disappear after 72 hours as is customary. “There were no objective reasons to keep these images” since there was “no notable incident on our rights of way”, pleaded Jérôme Harnois, the director in charge of risk management, security issues. security and institutional affairs.
The SNCF destroyed the videos taken on board the trains but kept most of the images at the station. The head of the security PC asked that their destruction be interrupted because of the two incidents reported in the stations of Saint-Denis, according to Sylvie Charles.