2023-07-01 19:03:19
And the big winner is… the RATP! In a brief press release published on Friday June 30, Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) announces that it is proposing to its board of directors to appoint, during a meeting scheduled for July 18, a consortium led by RATP Dev as operator of the future line 15 of the Grand Paris Express. To win this call for tenders, the subsidiary of the Parisian company joined forces with the manufacturer Alstom and Comfortdelgro, a passenger transport giant based in Singapore.
Unless there is a huge surprise, this trio will therefore operate this automatic metro line which, initially, at the end of 2025, will connect by bypassing Paris from the south the Pont-de-Sèvres station (Hauts-de-Seine) to that of Noisy-Champ (Seine-Saint-Denis), a 33 km section with 16 stations.
More than one and a half million passengers per day
By 2030, this line will make a complete loop around the capital. With a length of 75 km, it will cross 45 municipalities. Its attendance should exceed, daily, one and a half million passengers.
The 15 is clearly the most strategic of the four lines of the future Grand Paris Express, its backbone. It will offer connections with most of the other metro and RER lines. The contract is for an initial period of six years, which may be extended for a maximum of three years.
The RATP is therefore about to get the biggest slice of the cake, even though it has often been in Valérie Pécresse’s crosshairs in recent years. The LR president of the region, also at the head of IDFM, has greatly criticized the incumbent operator of the Paris metro for the repeated disturbances which have penalized users, especially when coming out of confinement. The right-wing elected official has repeatedly asserted that the principle of competition, which stems from European law but will only apply to the existing network from 2040, would help improve the quality of service.
Keolis operator of lines 16 and 17
It is also probably no coincidence that IDFM first awarded, in May, to a competitor of the RATP, in this case Keolis (1), the operation of lines 16 and 17, whose commissioning must however take place later, at the end of 2026.
Similarly, it seems surprising that this organizing authority reveals its choice of the consortium led by RATP Dev on Friday June 30, when the news of the day was overwhelmed by the urban riots and their consequences on transport, with the stopping of the circulation of buses and trams at 9 p.m. throughout France. As if to minimize the publicity of this information…
Once line 15 has been allocated, it remains to designate the operator of the very last line, line 18, which will connect Versailles to Orly airport, via the TGV station in Massy.
#strategic #line #fall #fold #RATP