The year 2023 will be the year of all records for work on the rails in Ile-de-France. Users will have to be more patient in transport. Never before have so many worksites been scheduled in such a short time on this network, one of the densest in the world, along with those of London and Tokyo. Ile-de-France residents alone represent 70% of national passenger traffic for the SNCF. “It will cut everywhere”warns Laurent Souvigné, about the RER B in particular, of which he directs the southern part for the RATP.
On many lines, the trains (RER or Transilien) will stop earlier in the evening: after 10 p.m., the journey will continue on board replacement buses, much less direct and slower than a train. This can sometimes last several weeks in a row. The metro is not spared. Interruptions are planned in the evening to complete the automation of line 4, extend line 11 from Mairie-des-Lilas to Rosny-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) and line 14 to Orly (Val-de- Marl).
For more complex sites, some stations will not be served for entire weekends. And, like every year, there will be summer interruptions, essential to carry out the extraordinary work. The most spectacular, in 2023, will be the replacement of the two railway bridges centenarians, on which pass the RER B and C, near the station of Massy-Verrières, in Essonne. They span both a TGV track and the road. The operation requires the installation of one of the largest cranes in the world, to remove the old riveted steel structures and lay the new ones, which weigh 1,090 tonnes for the Gallardon bridge and 1,670 tonnes for the Chartres bridge. The RER will not run for nearly five weeks, from mid-July to mid-August, on this portion.
Rejuvenate the network
Another extremely rare event in the summer, the RER B, the second busiest line in Europe, will be completely cut from the Gare du Nord, towards Mitry-Mory (Seine-et-Marne) and Paris-Charles airport -de-Gaulle, for four days. The interruption includes one working day, Monday. A first. It may well be scheduled for the weekend of August 15, on the section of “front line workers”those who prepare the day of others, the impact is considerable: 200,000 passengers per day will have to be handled by specific buses (2,400 bus trips are planned per day). The file is closely monitored by the regional prefect.
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