Meandering through Seine-Saint-Denis, the emblematic Ile-de-France tramway T1 will experience a new lease of life with the arrival of new trains in December. A novelty which is part of a general plan to modernize the line.
Under construction for several years, the T1 line of the Ile-de-France tramway, which runs through Seine-Saint-Denis, is about to undergo a major facelift with the arrival at the end of the year of new, more modern and spacious trainsets. . A new stage in a long-term “regeneration” project, costing 300 million euros.
Its crowded and discolored trains winding through the middle of cities from one end of the department to the other have become a marker of Seine-Saint-Denis: at 30 years old, the oldest tramway in Ile-de-France, s is about to experience a welcome modernization.
50 million travelers per year
Winding its way over 18 km through the proletarian northern suburbs of Paris, from Noisy-le-Sec (Seine-Saint-Denis) to Asnières (Hauts-de-Seine), T1 has long been a victim of its own success, with some 50 million travelers per year, made more complex by the aging of its equipment.
“When you have strollers with the children it’s complicated, you sometimes have to let three trams pass before you can get in. It’s always armored,” says Kanouté, a 32-year-old mother who did not wish to give her last name, waiting in the middle of the afternoon at the La Courneuve-Quatre Routes station to return home to Bobigny after doing her shopping.
inaugurated in 1992, the T1 marked the great return of the tramway to Ile-de-France, more than half a century after the dismantling of the many Parisian trams in the 1930s, to make way for the individual car.
In a department where all the metro and RER lines converge towards Paris, the T1 was the first “heavy” public transport allowing longitudinal crossing of Seine-Saint-Denis, without having to go through the capital.
Under construction for several years, the venerable tramway is about to undergo a major facelift with the arrival at the end of the year of new, more modern and spacious trainsets. A new stage in a long-term “regeneration” project, costing 300 million euros.
“When I arrived at the presidency of the Ile-de-France Region and Ile-de-France Mobilités, T1 was really the pending file on Seine-Saint-Denis, the most complex”, indicates Valérie Pécresse during a presentation to the press of the new trainsets, purchased from the French manufacturer Alstom.
“Jurassic Tram”
To adapt what is sometimes nicknamed the “Jurassic Tram” to the 21st century, the stations have been revised and enlarged. Signage and visibility have been redesigned and maintenance centers created.
Already extended several times, the line is set to expand further. At the start of the next decade, it could thus have doubled in size and stretched over 37 km, crossing the entire north of Ile-de-France from Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine) to Fontenay-sous- Wood (Val-de-Marne). Long delayed, construction is in full swing in the east.
Very important work, which has notably led to the closure of an entire section of the line for six months since the end of September.
Unlike the T2, which serves the Defense business district in Hauts-de-Seine and is mainly used morning and evening during the week for home-work trips, the T1 is used more as local transport, linked to the sociology and configuration of the popular territory it crosses.
“The T1 is a line that lives all the time, demand never drops. There are off-peak hours but not that off-peak. Demand does not drop much on weekends, on market days it is very busy”, notes Bruno Dumontet, director of trams for the RATP.
The extension and modernization of T1 is part of the broader plan to strengthen the public transport network in the Paris region, with the extensions of metro lines and the upcoming arrival of the Grand Paris Express, intended in particular to encourage commute from suburb to suburb.
“It will change the situation for the place of Seine-Saint-Denis in the whole of Greater Paris and Ile-de-France, and get out of this transport system which was aging in part and above all not corresponding more necessarily to the uses and needs of suburban residents”, estimates Stéphane Troussel, president (PS) of the departmental council.
