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Local France
05-05-2025
- Local France
French rail bosses say trains 'will circulate' during May strike week
Rail unions representing train drivers, conductors and technicians have issued overlapping strike notices for the period from Monday, May 5th to Sunday, May 11th - targeting the holiday weekend around VE Day. They are aiming for maximum disruption and a 'black week' on the railways as negotiations over pay and working conditions have broken down. Latest: What to expect from this week's French rail strikes However SNCF boss Christophe Fanichet said: "We are far from a black week", adding that the high-speed TGV services should run as normal. Detailed strike timetables are produced 48 hours in advance, but SNCF says that the high-speed TGV InOui and Ouigo services will run as normal from Monday to Thursday. It is expected that they will also be normal on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but more details will be available nearer the time. Fanichet added: "Even though staff can declare themselves on strike just 48 hours in advance, we have the experience to build transport plans taking into account the current level of strike support and projections for the days ahead.' The disruption will be concentrated on local TER services and the Paris region's RER and Transilien trains. Advertisement The regions of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Centre-Val de Loire, Hauts-de-France, Normandie, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur have all reported some level of disruption on local TER trains. In most cases this involves a reduced service, for example half or one third of the normal level of service. The most heavily impacted is the greater Paris region of Île-de-France where 'severe' disruption is expected on Monday on the RER and Transilien services - including RER B which links Paris to its two airports. The Paris Metro, bus and tram services will be unaffected, as their staff are not involved in the dispute.
Local France
07-04-2025
- Local France
Paris transport users warned of delays across services this week
The capital city's public transport system will be hit by quite a bit of disruption this week - from Monday, April 7th to Sunday, April 13th. The reasons vary, but in many cases, disruption is related to ongoing works and events, like the Paris Marathon, French daily Le Parisien reported. Before travelling, you should check the RATP website for an update on the latest traffic conditions. Here are the lines that will be affected; Commuter RER trains The RER network connects inner Paris with the suburb surrounding the city. This week, there will be heavy disruption on the RER lines B, C and D. There will be replacement buses, but beware that it may take longer than usual to get to your destination. RER B From Monday to Friday - after 10.45pm each night - traffic will be halted between Châtelet and Charles de Gaulle airport/ Mitry-Claye. There will be a replacement buss available. Advertisement RER C (Monday to Friday) After 11.30pm - there will be no traffic between Javel and Saint-Quentin en Yvelines; between Paris Austerlitz and Dourdan/Saint-Martin d'Étampes; and between Versailles Château Rive Gauche and Javel. After 11pm, traffic will also be suspended between Paris Austerlitz and Jusivy (via Choisy-le-Roi), as well as between Av Henri Martin and Montigny Beauchamp/Pontoise. Between 9.15am to 3.30pm, stops between Choisy-le-Rois going toward Bibliothèque F Mitterand will not be served. This would mean the stops: Les Ardoines, Vitry-sur-Seine and Ivry-sur-Seine. RER C (Saturday and Sunday) From 11.50pm onward, traffic will no longer run from Invalides toward Versailles Château Rive Gauche. From 11.45pm onward, traffic will be halted between Paris Austerlitz and Juvisy (via Choisy-le-Roi). On Saturday, from 11.55pm, and Sunday, from 11.45pm, traffic will be halted between Paris Austerlitz and Dourdan/Saint-Martin d'Étampes. RER D From Monday to Friday, starting at 11.20pm, no trains will run between Gare du Nord and Creil. Advertisement Metro Lines Line 6 - Traffic will not run between Nation and Daumesnil on Saturday (April 12th) and Sunday (April 13th) due to ongoing works. Replacement buses will be available. Line 12 - On Sunday, April 13, starting at 10 p.m., traffic will be interrupted on the entire line. Line 14 - On Monday and Tuesday, starting at 10pm, services will not run between Maison Blanche and Saint-Denis-Pleyel - so most of the line. Transiliens Line H - From Monday to Friday (from 10pm onward), traffic will be suspended between Gare du Nord and Persan–Beaumont (via Montsoult–Maffliers, Mériel); between Gare du Nord and Luzarches; and between Gare du Nord and Pontoise. Line J - On Saturday and Sunday, services will be suspended between Gare Saint-Lazare and Mantes-la-Jolie via Poissy. Line N - From Monday to Friday no trains will run from Montparnasse to Rambouillet from 11.20pm onward, and from Rambouillet to Montparnasse no trains will run from 11pm onward. From Monday to Friday, from 9pm, no trains will run between Dreux and Gare Montparnasse. Line P - From Monday to Friday, starting at 9.45pm, no trains will run between Gare de l'Est and Provins. From Monday to Friday, from 10.15pm onward, traffic will be suspended between Gare de l'Est and Coulommiers. On Saturday and Sunday, no trains will run between these stations. From Monday to Friday, starting at 10.20pm, traffic will be suspended between Gare de l'Est and Meaux, as well as between Gare de l'Est and Château-Thierry. On Saturday and Sunday, trains will not run between these stations either. Trams T3b - On Sunday, from 6.30am to 6.30pm, the tram will not run between Porte Dauphine (Avenue Foch) and Porte Maillot (Palais des Congrès) due to the Paris Marathon. T12 - On Wednesday, from 10pm onward, traffic will be suspended along the entire tram line. On Saturday and Sunday, traffic will be suspended between Massy Palaiseau and Épinay-sur-Orge.
The Independent
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
On the (rail) road: going to gigs by high-speed train
Hundreds of songs have been written about travelling by rail. The best, I contend, is Tony Joe White's 'The Train I'm On': 'Sometimes a train sounds lonesome…' 'Midnight Train to Georgia', 'Marrakesh Express' and 'Last Train to Clarksville' are among many others. Yet performers spend their time on the road, not the rails. One exception: singer-songwriter Jaz Delorean. He frequently performs with his band, Tankus, whose chosen form of transport is a Mercedes Sprinter. But when touring solo, the pianist prefers trains. The performer is just back from a one-night gig in St-Etienne, southern France, and told me about the experience on his long and winding rail journey from London St Pancras International. 'I found myself in the Eurostar queue with about 150 bedraggled and long-suffering parents and guardians of a riotous gang of Disney-fied youngsters,' he says. 'I'd totally forgotten about the early train [6.01am] being popular for families heading to Disneyland Paris.' Fortunately, he was on the departure an hour later. 'I had requested the organisers who had booked me that I travel by train instead of flying, because I really try not to fly shorthaul, and France is also still experimenting with a ban on shorthaul flights if a high-speed train goes to the same place. 'I do this journey a lot, in different variations, sometimes to Brussels, sometimes to Paris, and wander about writing songs in tiny bars in Pigalle, obnoxiously living up to my itinerant artist moniker. 'I have travelled around working as a musician, for two-thirds of the year, for over a decade, content to live out of a suitcase with not many possessions to think about.' He had booked a forward-facing window seat 'because I like to watch the Kent countryside flow like a wave under us'. For the transfer from Paris Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon, he recommends 'an hour's walk, through some great streets, but it helps to know exactly where you want to go because the area around Gare du Nord can be plagued with rogues looking for lost tourists'. On this occasion Jaz took the RER (suburban express), though: 'There wasn't much time for things to go wrong, and this was the only way to get to the gig on time for a soundcheck, travelling all on the same day.' The next leg was on an Ouigo train. 'This is the budget version of the iconic TGV high-speed train, so there were no power sockets, buffet car or empty seats. 'There were still toilets and a great view, which I relished as we powered through the slightly less grey Île-de-France countryside. The trip from Paris to Lyon was just over two hours, covering 393km.' The train whizzed past Migennes, in previous centuries a great rail junction – but now a forlorn station of which Jaz sings: 'The only thing that passes here is time.' At Lyon Part-Dieu, he had 25 minutes to transfer – and did not waste time. 'I found a decent piano on the station concourse and played 'Autumn Leaves' since the lyrics were written by [French poet] Jacques Prévert. 'Sure enough, a passer-by approached and started playing some licks on the top end of the piano – which sometimes I find annoying, but there I was in a social setting and he was really good. 'We shook hands at the end and walked in opposite directions, as I heard someone else sit down at the piano and start some Chopin.' About 30 minutes on the journey to St-Etienne, 'everyone on board, including me, received a text message saying that the train would be cancelled due to an unidentified package on the platform at a station down the line'. Luckily the driver said it was a false alarm and to get back on. By 3pm French time – seven hours after leaving St Pancras – he was in St-Etienne. A car was waiting to take him up the valley to the venue, where a baby grand had been hauled up just hours before. 'I played the gig, admired the lights in the valley, from our piano-crested peak, and left at the crack of dawn, to sleep most of the way back to London.' Perhaps the experience will inspire more railway songs. Meanwhile, a few more lines of journeys and longing from 'The Only Thing That Passes Here Is Time': 'The moon is swollen and staring/Drowning in a slingshot of stars/And you are a whole hemisphere away.'
New York Times
05-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Liverpool endured chaos and fear in Paris in 2022. Many fans are not ready to return
Phil Blundell and some fellow Liverpool-supporting friends were at a cafe by the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris on the day of the 2022 Champions League final. When they set off for the Stade de France, there was no sense of drama. The sun was shining and it was more than three hours before kick-off — plenty of time, even allowing for the train strike which had stopped anyone travelling to La Plaine, one of the two metro stops serving the southern end of the stadium where Liverpool supporters had been instructed to approach from. Advertisement The carriages on the RER line rattling towards the suburb of Saint-Denis were extremely busy and the crowds at the metro stop were huge. This was at around 5.30pm, two and a half hours ahead of kick-off between Liverpool and Real Madrid. Blundell was concerned. 'The signage from the station was vague and people were guessing which way to go,' he remembers. There was no attempt to direct anyone back towards the route from La Plaine, easing the load. Instead, everyone seemed to be heading towards the same access point, one that was already bursting at several times its capacity. To make matters worse, local police tried to secure the scene by reversing vans into an underpass below a motorway where the space was already uncomfortably tight. Blundell could see a checkpoint at the bottom of a ramp in the distance. 'It was probably able to do about 30 people a minute,' he recalls. 'There were easily 10,000 or more in the queue. It doesn't take great maths to work out there was a problem.' A crush was beginning. On the concourse above, fans who had made it through were having panic attacks. Temporarily, organisers gave up on the checkpoint, but that decision knocked problems closer to the stadium. Gangs of pickpockets had been operating in the underpass. Unchecked and now outside the gates, they were confronted by French police, who acted indiscriminately. Amid pitched battles, families with children were truncheoned and tear gassed, with others being attacked by locals; later, some suffered life-changing injuries. 'I found the Gendarmes to be unnecessarily confrontational, lacking in people skills, short of any ability to do anything that wasn't just haphazard at best and dangerous at worst,' says Blundell, who was able to make it to his seat safely. The football, when it finally started after a delay which UEFA unsuccessfully tried to pin on supporters due to their 'late arrival', came as some relief. Yet there was a 'peculiar' atmosphere throughout a match Liverpool would lose 1-0. 'Not like a European final,' Blundell says. 'The whole thing just didn't feel real.' Tonight, Liverpool return to Paris for the first time since that dark day in 2022. It is the same competition and the same local police force — which was found to have 'failed in its duty to protect people' by an independent report last year — but the circumstances are very different. Liverpool are not playing in Saint-Denis, but at Paris Saint-Germain's Parc des Princes stadium, in the west of the city. Around 60,000 Liverpool fans were estimated to have travelled to the French capital for the final three years ago; for this last-16 tie, the club have been allocated just 2,000 seats. The occasion, and the atmosphere around it, will be very different, which is one of the reasons why Blundell can rationalise returning to Paris. 'Saint-Denis and Paris are mentally detached for me,' he says. 'But I can understand why it isn't for others.' GO DEEPER 'He hit me with a hammer': Fans recall the chaos of the Champions League final For Danny Smith, the underpass in Saint-Denis stirred horrendous memories. He was 14 years old in 1989 when he experienced a crush in the Leppings Lane end at Hillsborough, where 97 Liverpool supporters were unlawfully killed due to the organisational failings of the authorities. Thirty-three years after surviving the worst stadium disaster in British history, he was trying to leave Stade de France with his teenage son when he was ambushed by a gang, who smashed his knee with a hammer and rummaged through his pockets before stealing his possessions in front of police while they stood watching. 'This is Saint-Denis,' one of them commented. Advertisement With no ambulances available, Smith was told he would have to make his own way to hospital. His priority was getting his son back to Merseyside safely so rather than seek urgent medical treatment for his shattered leg, he embarked on the journey via a train to Nantes, around 250 miles (400km) away. At Liverpool's Royal Hospital, X-rays revealed he had suffered three fractures to the upper part of his tibia. He was transferred to Aintree University Hospital for surgery the following day where surgeons had to rebuild his knee, comparing it to a 'box of lego because bits were everywhere'. He would spend the next couple of months in a hospital bed. At one point, it seemed as though he would become an amputee because his leg was damaged so badly; while that was avoided, his injuries have left him unable to return to work at a company that produces car seats. He is yet to receive compensation and a settlement with UEFA involving thousands of fans suffering from physical and mental trauma is ongoing. Smith is grateful for the help he received from the club he supports. Liverpool paid for his treatment at a rehabilitation company part-owned by the club's first-team physiotherapist Chris Morgan. But the idea of returning to Paris for tonight's game is unthinkable. 'I've not been to a European away game since and I certainly wouldn't ever go back to Paris,' Smith insists. 'In fact, my son and I agreed that we would never go back to France. Daniel had the chance to go to Euro Disney but he didn't even want to go there. 'We've still got our season tickets for Anfield. I've missed a couple of night matches with the cold weather. I just feel so worn out some days. We've been to a few away games in the Premier League this season but it takes a lot out of me.' 'I'm about 40 per cent of the person I was,' he adds. 'There's the ongoing issue with mobility but it's also about the trauma. I'd say dealing with the mental side of things has been even worse than the physical side of the assault. I thought I was going to lose my son that night. It brought back so much from being in the Leppings Lane. Advertisement 'I know some lads who are going over to Paris this time but none of them are taking their kids.' Smith attends meetings held at Anfield once a month with the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance (HSA), who arranged for him to have individual psychotherapy. He says there are Liverpool fans who are still coming forward, affected by what happened in Paris nearly three years ago. 'Survivors' guilt is something a lot of people suffered with after Hillsborough, and Paris brought a lot of that back to the surface. I found the therapy really useful.' Peter Scarfe, the chair of the HSA, says the organisation is aware of five suicides since Paris. In 2023, the family of Paul Marshall told the Liverpool Echo that the Hillsborough survivor took his life after behavioural changes following the final. 'We saw a huge spike in people reaching out to us in 2022,' Scarfe says. 'A lot of Hillsborough survivors were triggered by what they witnessed. Not all of them went to Stade de France, for some just watching on TV was harrowing enough. It brought back a lot of difficult memories. We have a WhatsApp support group and we provide individual therapy for those who need it. 'Getting drawn against PSG and the prospect of fans going back to Paris led to more people coming forward to contact us. Many have vowed never to go to Paris again. I'm only aware of one person in our group who has decided to go.' The ongoing work of the HSA has been boosted by financial support from both the LFC Foundation and the Football Association. On Monday, Scarfe was involved in a meeting with representatives from the French police, who spoke with fan groups through an interpreter. 'We received the reassurances we were looking for over crowd control and what plans are in place for the 2,000 fans going over there,' Scarfe says. 'They acknowledged that the behaviour of Liverpool fans in recent years has been exemplary and that they regard this game as low-risk. Advertisement 'They also explained that the two stadiums are very different and that it would be much safer this time in terms of the route for fans to take. They were appalled by how it was policed last time. There will be vans blocking side roads but not narrowing the actual route to the ground like we saw at the 2022 final.' Having dispatched operational staff to Paris a few weeks ago as part of standard preparation for a European tie, Liverpool are confident of a safe passage for supporters due to the game taking place in a different part of the city, where transport links are expected to be better. Manchester City's recent Champions League tie at Parc des Princes passed off without problems, although travelling fans have been warned not to use line 10 of the Paris metro system, which is used by the PSG ultras supporters, and take line 9 instead. He, and many others, are hoping lessons have been learnt by their counterparts, several hundred kilometres to the north. (Top image: Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic, images: Getty Images)
Zawya
28-02-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Morocco awards contracts for 168 new trains to South Korean, French and Spanish firms
ONCF (Office National des Chemins de Fer), the national railway operator of Morocco, announced on Wednesday it has awarded contracts to South Korean, Spanish and French companies for procuring up to 168 new trains as part of the country's transport infrastructure expansion ahead of the 2030 FIFA World Cup, which it will co-host with Spain and Portugal. The contracts, worth an estimated 29 billion dirhams ($2.9 billion) were awarded after a year-long international competition and include agreements with Hyundai Rotem (South Korea), CAF (Spain), and Alstom (France and Morocco). Hyundai Rotem won a contract worth 2.2 trillion South Korean won ($1.5 billion) to supply 110 double-decker Regional Rapid Transit (RER) trains, local English language news paper The Chosun Daily reported on Wednesday. The report said these trains will operate at speeds of up to 160 kilometres per hour(km/h). Spain's CAF was awarded a contract worth €600 million ($624 million) to supply an initial batch of 30 intercity trains, with an option for 10 additional units. The company said in a press statement that the agreement also includes an option for ONCF to procure technical assistance and spare parts supply services in the future. These trains will be able to operate at a speed of 200 km/h and have a high transport capacity, with more than 500 seats, the statement said, adding that Spanish government's FIEM (Business Internationalisation Fund) is financing the contract. A consortium of France's Alstom and Alstom Railways Maroc was awarded a contract to supply 18 high-speed trains for the Kenitra to Marrakech high-speed rail line but the value wasn't disclosed. An initial agreement was inked in October 2024 as part of €10 billion worth of deals between France and Morocco during the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to the country. Under the agreement, Alstom would deliver 12 high-speed trains with an option for 6 additional units. ONCF said in a statement that the contracts include commitments to develop railway industry in Morocco and long-term maintenance. Meanwhile, ONCF is yet to announce results for the 200 kilometres per hour semi-high-speed trains, the South Korean newspaper The Chosun Daily said. (Writing by Majda Muhsen; Editing by Anoop Menon) (
