I was in Paris in July, and was thoroughly impressed with the metro system. I always had an impression that Paris was a dirty city by western-european standards but I actually found the metro stations incredibly clean (and I travelled on multiple lines and through hub stations like Chatelet). In comparison, my city, Ottawa, has struggled to get one line functioning reliably in almost five years of trying, and the stations are filthy by comparison.
I mainly know the older, shallow line inner city routes. I've used the existing ?SNCF? Hookups to Orly, CDG and the Thalys North into Amsterdam, it works well. Paris was always an exemplar for modernisation in a time where the O.G. London underground was a bit moribund (rubber wheels) but retention of the carnet system beyond its life and a surge in London transport investment rather upended things.<p>This is a huge expansion. Being brave enough to build rings is great: most capital cities obsess with spokes to existing hubs, or like the Elizabeth line do a single slash across.<p>New York should read and weep.
This is a cool infrastructure project, but they really need to sort out ticketing.. Everyone else has adopted contactless EMV with capping, but in Paris they're only introducing the equivalent to London's Oyster (which frankly is a legacy ticketing system in itself and was introduced back in June 2003; over <i>twenty years ago</i>) now in the form of Navigo Easy for tourists. When I last visited, the t+ tickets were paper magstripe tickets that I could only buy using a terminal which required chip+pin and didn't have a proper touch screen but some weird roller you had to use..
As a German, living in a car-centric city with egregious and never-finished public transport projects in rich districts, but no functioning <i>public transport</i>, this makes me envious. And it seems very well-thought out, focusing on connecting suburbs.<p>Please, let this project finish successfully and inspire others to quit the madness of resource waste that is car scapes.
Train connections are a wonderful thing. They really shrink the space between two locations like no other transportation type. Just hop in, read a book or newspaper and suddenly you are somewhere else.<p>For me it’s a one hour car ride to the next major city (in southern Germany). With the train it takes 25 minutes.
Jealous. There were great “interurban” lines (sort of like light rail of today) all up and down the US East Coast and beyond. At one point you could ride these little local trains on a journey from Philadelphia to New York! Talk about a connected metropolis!
The exhibition mentioned in the article [1] is well worth a visit.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.societedugrandparis.fr/fabrique-du-metro" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.societedugrandparis.fr/fabrique-du-metro</a>
I can't help comparing the $36bn cost of this with the >$70bn the UK is spending on a single high speed line between Birmingham and not-quite-London.
> With the same ticket, passengers will be able to take the new métro, change to a bus, then hop on a train to get where they need to go. It practically eliminates the need for a car<p>The usual bullshit by designers who never consider there are people who need to carry stuff to where they want to go. Or people who cant walk properly anymore. Or people who care about safety at night.
I live in Paris. Just got a 200€ fine coming back from a running session.
Beware, RATP rule enforcers are now dressed as civilians and targets gullible individuals who breaks stupid rules, (mistook my pass with my credit card when i tried to check-in : 50€ for forgetting my pass, and 150€ for entering an quasi-empty bus by the middle door).
I see why RATP resorted to racketeering after all this over-budget fiasco. Hope it's worth it.
I always find it a bit odd when people call it the London Underground or the Paris Métro. Nobody else calls their subway either of those. If you rode the Underground (of for that matter, the Tube/chube), or the Métro, I know where you were in the world.<p>Maybe it's trying to make Chicago, New York and Tokyo feel better? I dunno.