Lille, Marseille… Where are we with Macron's metropolitan RER projects?

• RER "in the 10 main French cities", this is the ambition of Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday evening on YouTube.

• Today, Paris has a network of five regional express train lines.

  In the region, Bordeaux with a partial link, and Strasbourg with the REME being put on rail on December 11, have a metropolitan RER.

  Toulouse has clocked lines to Muret or Colomiers.

• Elsewhere, the exit of the Head of State caused old sea serpents to stir or projects to come out of the dusty boxes where they were posted

A statement on YouTube that is swallowed wrong in the largest cities of France.

At least in Bordeaux.

Renaud Lagrave, PS vice-president of the New Aquitaine regional council in charge of transport, almost choked when he heard Emmanuel Macron announce that he wanted to "develop a network of RER, urban trains, in the ten main French cities".

“Fortunately we did not wait, otherwise we would be at point zero of the metropolitan RER in Gironde”, underlines the elected official while the department has a first link between Libourne and Arcachon, in partial service since 2021.

, the Elysée lists “about fifteen projects under development throughout France.

They will sometimes take ten years or more to be fully finalized.

Some are already advanced, others are at the study stage.

takes

stock of the progress of metropolitan RERs in France.

The most advanced projects

As you will have understood, the Gironde already has a section of the metropolitan RER.

By 2030, three lines must be put on track to better serve the entire Gironde territory.

In June 2022, Alain Anziani, president of Bordeaux Métropole, explained to

the ambition to arrive "in ten years at a train every quarter of an hour".

In short, a real rhythm of RER.

Another well advanced project is that of REME: the European metropolitan express network in Alsace.

It is to develop gradually from December 11.

With the REME, the rail services around Strasbourg will be multiplied, a better timing of the trains will be put in place (one every 30 minutes on the peri-urban service of Strasbourg), the time slot will be extended from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. maximization of the use of SNCF stations, especially those abandoned, is announced.

The projects mentioned

In Grenoble, the words of the Head of State were greeted with enthusiasm, like the tweet of the President of Grenoble Alpes Métropole, Christophe Ferrari.

The PR @EmmanuelMacron announces his support for the #RERgrenoblois.

Excellent news.

We talked about it together during his visit to Crolles.

This announcement is the result of a collective mobilization of elected officials and actors of the territory We are ready.

@GrenobleAlpes is ready!

pic.twitter.com/uyFhYdRfeB

— Christophe FERRARI (@cferrari_38) November 27, 2022

Access to this content has been blocked to respect your choice of consent

By clicking on "

", you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to the content of our partners

I ACCEPT

And to better remunerate 20 Minutes, do not hesitate to accept all cookies, even for one day only, via our "I accept for today" button in the banner below.

More information on the Cookie Management Policy page.

France Bleu Isère explains that the Grenoble RER would make it possible to "reach within 10 to 15 years Crolles and Rives, Grésivaudan and the country of Voiron, passing through Grenoble with trains every quarter of an hour".

On the Côte d'Azur, last week, companies turned to the metro, failing to see the maritime shuttle project between Nice and Monaco emerge.

It is even "a priority project" in their recommendations, published on Wednesday through a study entitled "Azure territory: ambitions 2040".

This infrastructure could therefore be born within 18 years, according to the report, and would allow “the improvement of the territory, while 50,000 people go to Monaco every day from Nice or Menton”.

This project would cost "one billion euros, or two football stadiums", according to Pierre Ippolito, president of the Union for Enterprise (UPE) 06, who participated in the design of the study.

The project is not based “on the rails of the SNCF” but on “a direct and underground link” to be built to “guarantee high speed and thus make travelers abandon the car”.

sea ​​serpents

In Toulouse, the sea serpent takes the form of a star.

Weird, you might say, but that's the lot of mythical animals.

It's because the RER project is supported by “Rallumons l'étoile”.

For several years, there have been a few rhythmic lines, departing from Toulouse and heading towards Muret or Colomiers.

But only at peak times.

The collective is aiming for a railway star project on the already existing tracks: six star-shaped RER lines, irrigating the metropolis and beyond, with a schedule every half hour from 5 am to midnight.

The President of the Republic's YouTube release could give him a boost.

Finally, if the State puts its hand in its pocket.

Because communities have just seen the bill for the third metro line climb to 3 billion euros.

And there is the LGV to finance.

No sardine-shaped sea serpent in Marseille, but the creation of an RER was already mentioned by Emmanuel Macron in September 2021 when his Marseille plan in large was unveiled.

To implement this project, it is necessary in particular to develop an underground station in Marseille Saint-Charles, in order to make traffic more fluid.

A project that will come into being with the new line… Not before 2035. However, the Jupiter-like announcement on Sunday is welcomed as “very good news” by the Paca region, “particularly concerned with 3 of the 10 largest French cities [Marseille- Aix, Nice, Toulon].

[…] The creation of these metropolitan RERs will be effective thanks to the opening up to competition and the New Provence Côte d'Azur Line in the coming years.

»

A project similar to the metropolitan RER has been demanded for several years in Nantes by associations of transport users.

But the metropolis, managed by the PS and EELV, and the regional council, chaired by Les Républicains, have never advanced together on the subject.

“Obviously an RER would be a good idea for the inhabitants, considers Bertrand Affilé, vice-president (PS) of Nantes metropolis.

But what does the state offer as funding?

We will need to be accompanied.

The elected official argues that such a project would require “new railways”, in particular “to the west and south” of the agglomeration, without forgetting additional trains.

“We have to talk quietly with the region,” says Bertrand Affilé.

1h15 by train from there, in Rennes, a feasibility study commissioned in 2017 by the metropolis announced a cost between 835 million and one billion euros.

The project had not then been “buried”, but placed on a siding.

The RER project between Lille and the mining basin was buried at the bottom of a cardboard box in September 2015. The reasons?

The construction of 56 km of new tracks and six stations, including an underground one in Lille, was estimated at 2.1 billion euros.

The merger of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardie in Hauts-de-France a few weeks later contributed to its placarding.

Company

Metropolitan RER: Can the Toulouse project experience a real boost?

Company

Metropolitan RER: In Bordeaux, "we did not wait" Emmanuel Macron

• Company

• Public transport

• Transportation

• Emmanuel Macron

• RER

• reindeer

• Brittany

• Bordeaux

• Gironde

• Aquitaine

• Marseilles