Account settlements in the Senate. The French Football Federation (FFF) took advantage of its hearing before the elected officials of the Luxembourg Palace on Thursday afternoon to draw up the list of the causes which in its view led to the fiasco of the organization of the evening of the final of the Champions League at the Stade de France on May 28. And among them, a lack of communication from the RATP, which led to the congestion of access to the Stade de France from the RER D.
“If some people make decisions without referring to the other parties, it does not work, underlined the director of institutional relations of the FFF, Erwan Le Prévost. We did not have the information that the flow of RER B was going to be transferred to RER D. The police headquarters did not have this information either. “Didn’t the RATP warn you?” asks the chairman of the Senate culture committee, Laurent Lafon. “Exactly,” replied the leader of the federation.
A strike affected RER B, one of the two serving the Saint-Denis enclosure, on the day of the clash between Liverpool and Real Madrid, forcing travelers to change trains at Gare du Nord. The RER D trains transported 37,000 people towards Saint-Denis, three and a half times more than is usual for a big event at the Stade de France. B loaded 6,200, two and a half times less than usual. Which, according to the FFF, overloaded the capacities of the pre-filtering point, less important than that on the way to RER B. Shortly before 8 p.m., the police decided to blow up this check to avoid crushed to death.
The RATP denies in stride
“The RATP sent an uninterrupted flow of supporters. When you pass us between 12,600 and 20,000 people per hour, the thing becomes extremely complicated when you encounter congestion difficulties”, launched Erwan Le Prévot. The latter insisted “on the fact that we need real-time communication. We could have had time to rethink our system to cut off the flow of traffic coming from the RER D”. VS’
The day after the meeting, the RATP had rejected any responsibility for the strike in the fiasco of that evening. Contacted in the wake of these declarations by Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France, the RAPT denied these assertions, affirming that “the whole system (in particular communication on the lines to be taken by the different categories of supporters) had been shared with the Prefecture of Police and the French Football Federation during meetings held under the aegis of the FFF”.
In addition, the northern part of the RER B, which leaves from the Gare du Nord to reach Saint-Denis, is not managed by the RATP, but by the SNCF. Strike forecasts for RATP agents were also known 48 hours in advance. Traffic was almost normal this Saturday, May 28, even if the interconnection at Gare du Nord was suspended at Gare du Nord, which forced people using RER B to change trains to reach Saint-Denis.