Will the Paralympic Games give a boost to transforming the lives of people with reduced mobility in the Paris region? This morning, in the hemicycle of the regional council in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis), the president (LR) of the Île-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, announced during a press conference on the organization of the Paralympic Games its desire to launch a major project to make the historic Parisian metro accessible to people with reduced mobility.
After the Grand Paris Express - the 200 km automatic supermetro, which will serve the Parisian suburbs through 68 stations - Valérie Pécresse judges that this is THE major project to launch in the coming years.
The president did not fail to highlight in advance the efforts already made by her teams to make the Ile-de-France network more accessible to people with reduced mobility. “Today, 290 stations are accessible, that’s five times more than in 2016. 95% of RER and train traffic are accessible,” recalls the elected official. The Île-de-France Mobilités rail network, which is one of the densest in the world with 56% accessibility today, is catching up with that of Greater London after the 2012 Olympic Games. » There remains a black spot on the map: Paris.
A titanic project worth between 15 and 20 billion euros.
As the Olympic Games approach, major efforts have been made and today 100% of bus lines are adapted. But on other networks, it's a different story: only 25% of the metro, tram and RER are accessible to wheelchairs. “The RER A and B are accessible and their central sections serve the capital, we must not forget them,” recalls the regional president.
But Valérie Pécresse wants to go further and suggests working on a major plan to make all Paris metro lines accessible to people with reduced mobility. Cost of this titanic project: between 15 and 20 billion euros. The region is ready to commit up to 30% and turns to the State and the City of Paris for the remaining two-thirds. “A metro for everyone could be the big project of the coming decade!” The proposal is on the table. We need political decisions,” says the former Minister of Budget, Public Accounts and State Reform.
Taking the metro in Paris when you are in a wheelchair can quickly turn into a crossroads. Although the new stations built in recent years are accessible, the historic network remains difficult to use for people with reduced mobility. The work to remedy this, which promises to be expensive and complex, has until now always been postponed. But on the occasion of the Paralympic Games, Valérie Pécresse said she was ready to launch this titanic project, which should last at least 20 years and cost between 15 and 20 billion euros.
This Monday, the president of the Île-de-France region, also at the head of Île-de France-mobilités, the authority managing transport, proposed to “launch, as we did with Greater Paris Express, a new horizon for Ile-de-France transport: a metro for everyone . However, she recognized that this work would be “extremely complicated to carry out in inner Paris” and that “there will be technical impossibilities in certain stations, it is inevitable” , given the density of the underground of the capital, already very congested. But Valérie Pécresse defended “a winning bet” , believing that “disability will ultimately affect the entire population, with aging”.
The cost of such a project is estimated “roughly” between 15 and 20 billion euros. The region “is ready to take charge of a third” , assured Valérie Pécresse, calling on the State and the city of Paris to finance the remaining two thirds. “We must sit around a table and agree on the principle that the main transport challenge for the coming years is not to create new lines, but to make the historic network more accessible. It’s a political decision that three of us have to make.” This will require an amendment to the State-region plan contract.
The regional president called for starting with line 6, the easiest to make accessible because it is largely aerial: adding elevators would not require digging underground in some of the stations. A study has already been carried out, estimating the cost of the operation between 600 and 800 million euros. This first project “is ready to be launched” , assured Valérie Pécresse, judging the line “interesting because it serves important stations” , notably Nation and Charles-de-Gaulle-Étoile, its terminuses.
Today, if 95% of the RER and Transilien network is accessible, as well as 100% of buses and trams, according to IDFM, this is far from being the case for the metro. Only line 14 - built in the 1990s - is fully accessible, as well as recent extensions such as line 11. The new lines 15, 16, 17 and 18 of the Grand Paris Express will all be accessible.
