A time suspended by a court decision, work on the future CDG Express high-speed train will resume on 80% of the sites, where no protected species has been located, project officials said on Tuesday.
Read also: The general interest of the CDG Express shuttle called into question
The administrative court of Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis) canceled at the beginning of November a derogation from the environmental authorization allowing the CDG Express to cross areas where protected species live.
"We were forced to stop all the work"
which had started on the 32 km of the route of this fast train which is to connect Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport to the center of Paris, Grégoire told journalists Marlot, president of the CDG Express infrastructure manager.
"We mobilized an ecologist, an expert in protected species
,
"
who inspected the route in December, he added.
The specialist found it on 20% of the sites, which remain at a standstill.
These are in particular lizards that live in the ballast, noted Grégoire Marlot.
"80% [of the sites] began to resume last week, and until mid-February"
, pending a new visit from the ecologist at the end of March, he added.
The State, SNCF Réseau and the CDG Express infrastructure manager appealed against the administrative tribunal's decision, asking for a stay of execution which would allow work to be resumed everywhere pending a new judgment.
"If we do not have the reprieve, the schedule of all (the) operations will be called into question"
, worried Grégoire Marlot.
Out of a total budget of 2.2 billion euros, 537 million go directly to the modernization of line B of the RER, which serves the northern suburbs of Paris, and the work schedules are mixed, he recalled.
"All the projects on the northern axis have been studied together, and re-studying them would take an extremely long time,"
added Alexandra Locquet, Managing Director of the Infrastructure Manager - which brings together Aéroports de Paris (ADP), SNCF Réseau and the Caisse. deposits.
A theoretical opening planned for the end of 2025
The CDG Express should theoretically open at the end of 2025. If the delays due to the spring containment have been made up, it is still too early to assess the consequences of the court's decision, according to the two officials.
The Montreuil court does not consider
"that a resumption of air traffic growth can be anticipated on the foreseeable date of commissioning of the infrastructure in question"
, which according to it does not respond
"to imperative reasons of major public interest ”
.
Hence the cancellation of the exemption.
The Infrastructure Manager disputes this interpretation, believing that air traffic will have returned to normal when the structure opens.