The long series of renovation of the Lille metro continues to poison relations between the European Metropolis of Lille and Alstom. Responsible for transport policy in this territory of one million inhabitants, she ended the mediation initiated with Alstom and brought the long conflict between them before the Lille administrative court.
It must be said that it has been waiting since 2016 for the delivery of the new automatic piloting system for its metro and 27 new trains, twice as large as the current ones. The contract (266 million euros) was concluded in 2012 to modernize the world’s first automatic urban metro, put into service in 1983. A small technological marvel at the time, which was sold to other cities such as Paris or Shenzhen (China), but the Lille metro has aged. Its renovation is all the more urgent as users are experiencing the deterioration of service, the increase in breakdowns and the congestion of saturated trains during peak hours, especially on line 1, the oldest.
In 2012, therefore, to begin the work that was already expected to be necessary, the Lille Metropolis chose Alstom rather than the German Siemens, which unsuccessfully contested the award of this contract before the Lille administrative justice system. As delays accumulated, the contract had already been renegotiated in 2019, and the Metropolis had obtained 53 million euros in compensation: 23 million in cash, 20 million in maintenance costs not invoiced by Alstom and 10 million in royalties on selling the autopilot system to other cities.
“Blocking anomalies”
Again in 2021. Alstom being unable to meet the deadlines to which it had committed, new negotiations opened and the European Metropolis of Lille then demanded “firm guarantees from the global rail giant on its strategy” and wondered: “Are all means mobilized? »
The railway manufacturer partly explained the new delays by the crisis due to Covid-19, which reduced its industrial capacities, and then assured that, at the end of 2023, the Lille metro would be equipped with new equipment. Failing to have been resized, as planned, for Euro 2016 football, it would therefore be for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Olympic handball events to take place at the Grand Stade, served by line 1 of the Metro.
If part of the new trainsets have been delivered by Alstom – they are stored in a warehouse in Villeneuve-d’Ascq (North) – and if tests took place this summer as well as this fall, causing temporary traffic interruptions compensated, only in part, by the installation of substitute buses, the new control system has still not been able to be activated.
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