Paris City Hall persists and signs. A month after his declaration affirming that the Bercy-Seine bus station will close its doors after the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, to return to its primary destination, a parking lot for tourist buses, Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy of Anne Hidalgo returned this Wednesday on the subject.
If he reaffirmed his firm desire to prohibit the use of the premises as a bus station by long-distance coach companies like Flixbus and Blablabus, the famous “Macron coaches”, the first deputy wanted to look further afield and is considering the creation of a network of bus stations in Greater Paris.
5.8 million travelers per year, an untenable situation
If the announcement did not please the operators of SLO (Freely Organized Transport Services), Emmanuel Grégoire recalled the reasons for this decision: “Bercy has become the only station in Paris. Pershing closed with the work on Porte Maillot. Gallieni also with the liquidation of Eurolines. And since SNCF sold Ouibus (now Blablabus) to Blablacar, these coaches have been transferred from the railway station to the bus station. »
An untenable situation for Bercy station which sees 5.8 million travelers and 111,000 buses per year. According to an APUR note published at the start of 2023, this represents nearly 83% of attendance in Greater Paris. “A single station cannot accommodate almost all of the traffic. Especially since it has taken on an almost national dimension since only 44% of travelers come from Paris. It’s not for nothing that there are two airports in Île-de-France,” he adds to support his point.
Bercy Park transformed into a “station square”
Especially since the place is not suitable for such a flow of travelers. The connection with metro lines 6 and 14 is far from easy since you have to walk at least ten minutes to reach these stations. And the too discreet signage often leads the flow of travelers to wander in search of a solution in the Bercy park, “transformed into a real station square”, which pays the price. “We observe many nuisances in this place, between baggage snatching, attempts to break into buses or the noise of rolling suitcases on unsuitable flooring. »
To finish burying the Bercy bus station, the elected official for the 12th arrondissement of Paris also discusses the strategic positioning of the place. For traffic first, “it’s a battle to get operators to leave via the François Mauriac quay; they often prefer to leave via the 12th arrondissement, with the traffic difficulties that this entails.” But also for travelers, “at what point is it consistent that a resident of Seine-Saint-Denis, who wants to go to Amsterdam by bus, must first make the trip to Bercy? This is nonsense.”
Create a network of small hubs in Greater Paris
Emmanuel Grégoire proposed to the National Transport Regulatory Agency (ART) to oversee the reflection on a network with a regional plan for the organization of long-distance buses or Macron coaches. He proposes the creation of several small hubs in the north (for England, Beauvais and the Benelux), in the east (for Germany, Switzerland, etc.) and in the south (for Portugal, Spain and Italy). A network in which “Paris will take its part if it proves coherent”.
“We could create a pole in the north, one in the east and one in the south initially,” he says before citing Roissy, Disneyland and Orly as examples. Hubs which could be interconnections, with public transport, “in particular the Grand Paris Express and the future line 14 which will go from Orly to Carrefour Pleyel”, and also motorways, for Marne-la-Vallée.
Looking for candidates
This master plan would be delivered in the coming months if all invited participants agree. “The idea is that there should be an intermediate period, a big year, to allow new places to be identified. “. Emmanuel Grégoire announces that he has already agreed to a meeting with the operators, on November 9, to discuss it: “They cannot exempt themselves from the consequences of their activity”. According to him, Patrick Ollier, the president of the Greater Paris Metropolis, has already given a favorable opinion to participate in the discussion.
“The municipalities around Paris are not rushing to accommodate such infrastructure at the moment, but this project could be consistent with certain cities which have an urban project with a large capacity hotel program like Saint-Denis . »