In the Paris metro, on line 14, between the Gare-de-Lyon and Bercy stations, an amused young man nudges his neighbor. “Look, it’s Jean Castex”, he points out. Here is the latter in the train, similar to his meme, this diverted image of him on a jump seat that loops on social networks with humorous captions. They can’t resist pulling out their phone to take a picture.
A few seats further, a dad shows the former prime minister to his daughter and asks if he can take a selfie. The new CEO of the Autonomous Paris Transport Authority (RATP) lends itself to it with good humor, removing the mask that he is one of the few to wear. Change towards line 6, direction Nation. Jean Castex stops on the quay, sniffs: “Do you smell the smell of number 6? Ah, the tire metro…” It is true that the line is characteristic.
New interruption. This time, a passenger challenges him, like an old acquaintance: “I allow myself, we had you in our living room every evening… Did you see the waiting times? What are you planning to do? » Jean Castex argues and ends up throwing the ball back to him: “And you, what are you doing at the moment? As you may know, we are looking for people at the RATP, we are recruiting. Join us, sir! » Neither one nor two, the young man slips away, without leaving his CV. This time, it is the Gersois who smiles.
Tense dialogue with IDFM
However, the new “Mr. Metro” takes the remark seriously. The decline in service this fall, the absenteeism in his troops worry him. At the headquarters of the RATP, quai de la Rapée, in Paris, where he took office on November 28, he barely looks at the view of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, but asks for a screen to be installed urgently. with “network weather”. Since then, he has been able to follow the traffic on the metro or RER in real time and rack his brains to find a solution to technical incidents, but also to the multiplication of abandoned luggage and “traveller discomfort” which disrupts the lines.
“I want to improve the situation, I get paid for it”, he explains bluntly, anticipating what Valérie Pécresse will ask him, Friday, January 13. The president of the Ile-de-France region convened for that day an extraordinary board of directors of Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM, former STIF), the body that organizes transport, and summoned the boss of the RATP to come and present to him “line by line” its roadmap for improving production rates. IDFM, whose acronym crosses the side of buses and metros, is the very first customer of the RATP: 4.8 billion euros in revenue expected in 2023.
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