Paris’s Orly airport now has the right to its metro! There line 14 is extended and will welcome from this Monday June 24, 2024 the first travelers to connect Saint-Denis, north of Paris, to Orly airport (then accessible only by bus and express train). One month before the Olympic Games and after a race against time, this line becomes the first “supermetro” in the Paris region.
Emmanuel Macron planned to attend the inauguration and the project finished on time. “It’s a major success” for RATP, main project manager of the project, welcomed the spokesperson for the public group Jimmy Brun. “It was ultra-complex, with an extension, a modernization of the operating automation system and the renewal of the rolling stock”, he explains. With 28 km long, eight new stations and 11 communities crossedline 14 will transport one million passengers per day by mid-2025.
An extension of 3.5 billion euros
This line will be crucial for the smooth running of the Olympics, since it will serve the athletes’ village, the Stade de France and the aquatic center to the north, unloading lines B and D of the RER and line 13 of the metro. South, it will reach Orly airport in 25 minutes from Châtelet, in the center of Paris. To deliver on time, RATP had to work extra hard. The construction site was almost never interrupted during the Covid-19 pandemic and could be completed at the cost of numerous line closures on weekends, during school holidays or in the evening.
To respond to the foreseeable explosion in attendance, Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) spent 1.1 billion euros to purchase 72 new trains currently being deployed, around fifty of which will be in service by the Olympics . The extension cost 3.5 billion euros, entirely financed by the Société des Grands Projets (SGP). The extension will benefit 260,000 inhabitants south of Paris, in Val-de-Marne and Essonne, according to Île-de-France Mobilités.
After line 14, around line 15
On the Orly side, “10% of employees and travelers will immediately abandon their car in favor of the metro” while until now “90% of the platform’s 28,000 employees and 70% of passengers come by individual vehicle”estimates its manager, Groupe ADP, which expects to see transit in the new station “nearly 100,000 passengers per day”.
The line will allow you to join other emblematic places in the south of Ile-de-France such as the Rungis market, the future Cité de la gastronomy which is due to open in 2028 or the Bièvre scientific valley. After eight years of work, this is one of RATP’s major projects which is coming to an end, before the inauguration of the southern section of future line 15 expected at the end of 2025. RATP is also turning its attention to another program important: the automation of line 13, the eternally ill and overloaded network, supposed to be completed in 2035.
