The first RER E towards Nanterre-La-Folie was due to leave Saint-Lazare station, platform 32, at 10:20 a.m., Monday May 6. After 3 kilometers in the tunnel, with peaks at 120 km/hour, the train must serve Neuilly-Porte Maillot, then La Défense, before stopping at Nanterre, the new terminus of the line. Three days earlier, on freshly oiled bamboo platforms, officials praised a construction site completed in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics, despite the four trains per hour (eventually sixteen) that will run in each direction, until at the end of the year. But this extension of Eole to the west marks a major step in a colossal project which gives hope to the poorest areas of Yvelines, and could, in a more distant future, make service to Normandy more fluid.
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Presented as a structuring Ile-de-France axis, Eole was for a long time above all a Parisian subject. The aim was to unload the RER A, the East-West line, the central section of which (Gare de Lyon-Charles-de-Gaulle-Etoile) was already a victim of its success at the end of the 1980s. Two projects were then in progress. competition. RATP imagines Meteor, future line 14, which would connect Saint-Lazare to the new Paris Rive Gauche office district. The SNCF is defending the route of a fifth RER line, which, over 111 kilometers, would cross the four existing lines and connect Seine-et-Marne to Yvelines. In Matignon, Michel Rocard refuses to decide; both will be funded. “It is also a moment when the socialist government begins to think about extending Defense to the west,” adds Paul Lecroart, urban planner at the Paris Region Institute.
The first section, Chelles-Gournay/Haussmann-Saint-Lazare, was inaugurated in 1999. In 2003, the line stretched to Tournan, in the south of Seine-et-Marne. But costs and delays postponed the project to the west. It was Nicolas Sarkozy, the former mayor of Neuilly who became President of the Republic, who relaunched it in 2009, when Defense was hit by the financial crisis. The route is revised.
Fragile foundations
Rather than heading towards the wealthy suburb of Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche, the RER will serve the Groues business district, in Nanterre, before reaching Mantois. The site – 8 kilometers of tunnel, three stations – is extraordinary in many respects. The bill also increased from 3.7 billion to 5.4 billion euros. The revision of the provision for risks (+700 million) to the standard of a project of this scale explains part of it. Technical hazards and program changes, the rest.
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