The Paris 2024 Olympic Games, a showcase for river transport

2024-02-03 05:00:18

Make the Seine the beating heart of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This is the will of the organizing committee, a bias which is not without giving Haropa (an acronym taken from the three cities Le Havre, Rouen, and Paris), the port infrastructure manager, who held a press conference in the capital on Monday January 29.

The puzzle began with the construction of the Olympic village, in Saint-Denis, on the banks of the river but also on Île-Saint-Denis. This choice, de facto, places an arm of the Seine, the one used until now by boats, right in the middle of the site. And to avoid having to interrupt traffic, navigation had to be restarted on a secondary arm.

Short traffic interruptions during swimming events

It will not be possible, however, to maintain traffic in the run-up to the opening ceremony, scheduled for July 26 on the Seine. From July 19 and until the 27th, river traffic will be prohibited in Paris, for reasons including security.

Interruption also, at a minimum, during the swimming events and the swimming component of the triathlon, over 10 kilometers, starting from the Alexandre-III bridge. The organizers, on the other hand, will have a narrow window of opportunity for the installation of infrastructure, the competition itself and dismantling (from 2 a.m. to 1 p.m. for the Olympics, from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the Paralympic Games).

The concern of cereal growers

While the cereal growers, who transport 800,000 tonnes of their production across the Seine each summer to Le Havre, have expressed their concern, Haropa believes that they have obtained a guarantee from the authorities that traffic disruptions would be reduced to their strict minimum. And that in total they will be largely offset by the formidable ” spotlight “ that these Games offer to river transport. “The opening ceremony will be watched by a billion and a half viewers,” savors in advance Antoine Berbain, its deputy general director, responsible for the territorial management of Paris.

An opportunity to discuss in particular the development of urban river logistics, whether it involves transporting the structural elements of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, or transporting Ikea products to Parisian customers (70,000 deliveries via the Seine in one year) or to supply drinks to the capital’s cafes, restaurants and hotels.

A greening of the cruise activity

The ceremony will also see the delegations arrive on the water, aboard around a hundred speedboats. And this event of global scope offers, in the opinion of Stéphane Raison, general director of Haropa, “a lever of transformation for the cruise activity”.

The main Parisian companies will have acquired their first electric boats by the summer. And “all sightseeing boats, carrying nearly 8 million tourists per year, will run on electric motors by 2037”he rejoiced during the signing, on January 29, of a partnership agreement between Haropa and the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games, an agreement aimed at strengthening the overall decarbonization strategy of Le Havre and its vast hinterland including the capital.