The man in charge of building it says that building the long-awaited express train route from Paris Charles de Gaulle to the city center by the opening of the 2024 Olympics is “radically untenable.”
Valérie Pécresse, president of Ile-de-France Mobilités, the regional transport network, has given the government a true Hobson’s choice: either push ahead for 2024, and in the process create a long period of delays and disruption to rail traffic, or move the date forward to 2026, thus prolonging the existing delays and disruption.
The problem is that to make 2024 work, it would be necessary to shut down the existing RER B line for three weeks in the summer of 2022 and then again in 2023. That would mean that everyone who now uses it for the airport, as well as the people for whom it is the commuter rail line to Paris, would have to shift to buses for those weeks—and that’s 200,000 to 300,000 people a day.
The other choice would be to build an entirely new line parallel to the existing lines; it would avoid the mass turmoil, but would continue the existing delays, lateness and overcrowding for another two years.
Pécresse says the government must make a decision soon, and he’s leaning toward the extension, saying that pushing for 2024 would be placing a priority on visitors over daily transport in the region.
