Paris has unveiled the first of its new driverless Metro trains amid preparations for the opening of the first line in a huge expansion of the city’s iconic underground network.
Grand Paris Express
Dubbed the Grand Paris Express, the project is Europe’s largest civilian infrastructure project, set to add 200 new kilometres (120 miles), four lines and 68 new stations to Paris’s belle epoque metro.
The new map sees added rings running around the system’s classic bicycle spoke design. These four new lines – to be numbered 15, 16, 17 and 18 – will be complemented by new extensions to existing lines 11 and 14. The additions will serve commuter surburbs and towns on the city’s edges without passing through dense central Paris.
By 2030, it is projected to be carrying 2 million passengers daily, shifting a whole sector of the Paris population away from their cars and onto shared transport.
Line 15 on show
The whole network was supposed to be up and running in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics and won’t be, despite being announced back in 2009, with ground broken in 2016. Floods, supply chain problems and the Covid-19 pandemic intervened.
Still, line 14 serving Orly Airport should be a go by then. And line 15 saw a test run in November 2023, with a brand new 108-meter-long six-car train, built by Alstom, appearing for press and excited onlookers amid a fanfare of media attention and a riot of red, white and blue lighting, livery and paraphernalia.
Changing lives
French Transport Minister Clément Beaune was there to witness the advent of the new metro and its new rolling stock, and captured the mood with a turn-of-phrase that managed to be both neat and portentous. “To change people’s lives, we will have to change how they move,” he said.
In press releases, the Express sells itself as a way to streamline daily commutes but also address social inequality and environmental issues. But is that all just hot air?
Urban design winner
Harvard University says not. The metro expansion won 2023’s Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design, recognizing “design that transforms cities and the lives of its inhabitants in unanticipated and extraordinary ways.”
What’s more, the Brussels-based International Association of Public Transport agrees that the creation of the network may in fact go some way to addressing pollution and traffic congestion in Paris, a problem so bad that the city enforces air quality speed limits and even closures on its ring-road and where walking and cycling have become key priorities.
“The Grand Paris Express, with its circular lines, encourages movement from suburb to suburb,” the Association’s Secretary General Mohamed Mezghani said. In his view, the project places Paris firmly among top cities for shared suburban mobility solutions globally, such as Tokyo, Moscow and Washington D.C.
