The president of Ile-de-France Mobilités, Valérie Pécresse, wants an improvement in the quality of service in public transport in the region, now that the regularity has improved after a few difficult months, she indicated. this Wednesday.
“I am waiting for specific commitments, a plan to return to normal for the quality of service perceived by users in their daily journeys”, she declared after receiving the leaders of the RATP and the SNCF for a point. of stage.
Information for travelers, target of criticism
The elected official cited a whole list of points “to improve”. For the SNCF, this concerns in particular information on board lines D, U, T4 and T11, the cleanliness of trains on lines E, H, N, P, R, T4 and T11, contact with passengers, the operation elevators and the availability of CCTV cameras.
On the RATP side, she pointed out the information for passengers on the RER (A and B) and buses, the tags on the metros, the cleanliness of the trams and night buses and the information for users in the event of breakdown of the escalators. The functioning of vending machines and validation gates also leaves something to be desired.
An improvement in regularity
The regional president announced additional credits to set up “12 additional canine brigades (…) to speed up the removal of doubt in the event of an abandoned package” before welcoming the improvement in regularity, after a slump in the second semester 2022.
At the last point made in early April, lines 3, 6, 8 and 13 of the metro were notably “red”, that is to say “in difficulty” and lines 7, 11 and 12 “fragile”. The situation deteriorated on line 3. Lines B and D of the RER were considered “in difficulty”, and lines C and R “fragile”, while social unrest remained a concern on lines J and L and n haven’t stopped since.
Alstom and the “living scandal”
As for the Parisian buses, we were at 87.5% of the service provided, against 83% in January and 75% in September. “We should be close to 90% at the end of May,” promised RATP president Jean Castex.
Valérie Pécresse took the opportunity to denounce the “living scandal” of the delays taken by Alstom to renovate in depth 31 trains of the very disrupted RER B, a contract of 75 million euros awarded in 2017 which permanently immobilizes 6 trains at the time.
“In connection with the RATP, I decided that we stop this major renovation to replace it with a lighter renovation, to put these 6 trains back on the network”, she announced. Sixteen trains in total will only be refreshed, without air conditioning or video surveillance, pending the arrival of the new generation of equipment, according to Ile-de-France Mobilités.