They were no longer very numerous to believe that the Olympic deadline could be held, and the Covid has just given them the final blow. No, the future metro lines 16 and 17 will not run north of Paris in 2024 for the Olympic Games.
The Secretary of State for Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, confirmed this Monday morning on RTL. “The calendar was already tight. The Covid shifts the calendar a little more. I can confirm that access (to the Olympic Games sites) will only be possible with line 14, the extension of which is currently under way, ”said the Secretary of State.
Line 14 must be extended from Saint-Lazare to Mairie de Saint-Ouen by the end of the year, then to Saint-Denis Pleyel in 2024. The large Pleyel station is under construction in Saint-Denis, near the Stade de France, the future Olympic swimming pool and the athletes' village. In addition to line 14, it must accommodate lines 15, 16 and 17 of the future metro.
These are the first sections of lines 16 and 17, from Pleyel to Le Bourget, which had to be ready for the Olympic Games, in order to link the Olympic sites. The calendar was already tense and more than uncertain, as we indicated at the start of the year. The health crisis, which slowed down construction sites, made the postponement inevitable.
"Unacceptable" according to Anne Hidalgo
A postponement that the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo had judged Sunday "unacceptable". These two lines "are referred to a calendar that goes well after" 2024, "it is not acceptable, it is absolutely necessary that there is remobilization of the French State, of the government on public transport", she had declared.
Contacted, the Société du Grand Paris (SGP), charged by the State to build this future metro at 35 billion euros (200 km and 68 new stations in the suburbs by 2030), recalls that “the schedule for completion lines 16 and 17 was extremely tight to allow the entry into service of a first phase for the 2024 Olympic Games ”.
"The health crisis has generated major upheavals in these schedules, calling into question, as the minister said, the effectiveness of the measures planned to secure the objective of summer 2024," confirms the SGP, which does not however, does not provide a new commissioning schedule. "An update on the more complete situation will be made by the beginning of July," promises the SGP.
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