After more than 5 months of shutdown, line B of the Rennes metro is back in service this Thursday, June 20, 2024, at 12 p.m. The buses, whose lines had to be disrupted to partially replace the metro, should return to their initial routes from July 8. Relieved, the Metropolis hopes to no longer suffer any further failures on the trains of its metro, inaugurated less than two years ago.
After numerous setbacks, line B of the Rennes metro was finally able to reopen this Thursday, June 20 at noon. Of a different model from the trains of line A, those of line B have no longer been used since January 3, 2024, after the discovery of a broken part. Concern then weighed on the “bogie”, that is to say the trolley located under the trains and which allows them to be guided. The breakage of a part raising fears of a failure in the trajectory of the metro.
Read also. “The end of the tunnel”, line B of the Rennes metro should restart in mid-June.
After the replacement of parts and safety tests carried out by the manufacturer of the metro trains, Siemens, the Technical Service for Mechanical Lifts and Guided Transport of the Ministry of Transport (STRMTG) issued a favorable opinion yesterday, Thursday June 19, for restarting the line. “The operating authorization order has [ensuite] was published by the Prefecture on June 20, 2024 in the morning”specifies the Métropole de Rennes, which did not wait any longer to reopen its line.
It must be said that the breakdown which occurred on January 3, 2024, a few weeks after a previous interruption of the line, had aroused the exasperation of users, from the Cleunay district to the Beaulieu campus, via the town of Saint-Jacques de la Lande . Before these two successive breakdowns, the Rennes Metropolis was delighted with the number of people on the line, accumulating “up to 110,000 trips per day,” fin 2023.
But once line B was suspended, the entire bus network had to be reviewed, in an attempt to partially replace the stopped metro. An upheaval which left some of the users on the sidewalk, either because their “historic” bus line had been eliminated, or because the buses were now overrun. This morning, the Metropolis wanted to reassure them: “Following the restart of line B, the bus network which was in place before the shutdown of line B can be put back into service from Monday July 8.”
Will everything return to normal? Caution, caution, the coming weeks will tell.
