We’ve been desperately waiting for it, but here it is. After more than a year and a half of delay, line B of the Rennes metro will start operating Tuesday morning with a first train which will start at 5:15 am. The smallest city in the world with a metro before Lausanne and Brescia overtook it, the Breton capital is therefore preparing to pass the second. The opportunity for 20 minutes to take stock with the mayor and president of Rennes Métropole Nathalie Appéré on the city’s mobility and transport policy.
Line B of the metro will finally come into service. What state of mind are you in?
Very enthusiastic of course! But there is also a form of pride in seeing the completion of a project that has been under construction for more than twenty years, including eight years of construction. This commissioning will revolutionize the daily lives of people from Rennes and their way of getting around in this city. This extraordinary project is also the result of a collective adventure that we must salute. But the mission of each other will not stop on the morning of September 20.
Are you afraid of a few hiccups?
Not everything will be completely settled on start-up and there will continue to be a period of break-in and adjustment. Because in the rail sector, the more you drive, the higher the level of performance and reliability. We tend to forget it, but it took two years for line A to reach its level of reliability. We will also reach it on line B but it will take a little time.
You speak of a revolution in the daily life of the people of Rennes. In which way ?
Three quarters of the inhabitants will now be less than 600 meters from a metro station. This offers a considerable facilitation of travel and will make it possible to eliminate 50,000 car trips per day in the metropolis. The commissioning of line B will also be accompanied by a complete redeployment of the bus network from October 24 with extended timetables and greater bus frequency. And this is not the end of the story in terms of mobility policy since we are continuing to work on the five trambus lines. The feasibility studies have been completed and we are going to start a consultation phase on the routes by the end of the year. Around this line B, it is a whole transport and mobility network which is reinforced so that one can move more easily and in a less polluting way.
So a car-free city?
No. All these new mobility solutions should make it possible to reduce car traffic in order to have a more peaceful, greener, less polluted and less noisy city. It is a public health and ecological transition issue. The removal of the Vilaine car park also marks this ambition. But there will continue to be cars in the city center. Because the zero car objective does not make sense. In any case, this is not the objective that we are pursuing.
Line B in numbers
On a 13.4 kilometer route, line B of the metro will serve fifteen stations between the municipalities of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande and Cesson-Sévigné. When it is launched, 21 trains will run simultaneously before four others arrive by the end of the year. 110,000 day trips are planned on this new line, while 140,000 are already counted on line A.