With its view of the ephemeral Grand-Palais, a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides, this Parisian brasserie has every reason to rub its hands as the Olympic Games approach. But, for Nicolas (the people cited by their first name only requested anonymity), one of the chefs in the kitchen, the anxiety outweighs the promise of full tables.
“For several months, transport has been a daily problem, deplores this user of line 8, who lives east of Paris. When I come home after midnight, we wait for a quarter of an hour for the metro and, frankly, it’s comparable to a cattle train. » With the Olympic Games (JO) this summer, the forty-year-old fears even more overloaded trains and, he thinks, a drop in the number of metros in the evening to compensate for their increase during the day.
His fear is such that, if he had the possibility, he would have taken his vacation “right at the time of the Olympics. Without hesitation “. “ [Mais] we were banned from taking vacations in July and August. It was moderately received”he says, thinking of the twenty members of his brigade, the majority of whom live in the suburbs. Instead, the father plans to take leave in May and leave his child with grandparents during the summer holidays.
Transport already overloaded
Among the approximately eighty testimonies collected by The world of Ile-de-France residents who are going or would like to escape Paris and its region during the Games, transport saturation constitutes the first reason given, ahead of the fear of the increase in the cost of living linked to the influx of tourists and security.
The Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojop) has set itself the objective of having 100% of spectators travel to and from the twenty-five Olympic sites by public transport, by bike or on foot. Every day, from July 26 to August 11, 800,000 travelers are expected on Ile-de-France transport, which must be added to daily users.
This attendance is equivalent to “a normal day outside of summer”puts Laurent Probst, the general director of Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), into perspective, in an interview with West France. Problem is, the supply of normal days outside summer is already seen as lacking. In November 2023 – month for which the most recent data is available −, RER B and RER C had a regularity rate of 80.4 and 82.1% respectively. For the RER C, 1,233 trains out of 13,300 (9%) were canceled due to lack of drivers. It is “extremely fragile lines” for which “we are not necessarily reassured”worries Marc Pélissier, president of the Ile-de-France Transport Users Association.
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