The Strasbourg public prosecutor's office announced, Friday January 24, the opening of an investigation against Strasbourg on January 11.
“The purpose of this opening of information is to enable investigations to continue in an appropriate procedural framework under the authority of an investigating judge, for the purposes of clarifying the causes of the accident and determining possible responsibilities on the criminal plan »said the interim public prosecutor of Strasbourg, Alexandre Chevrier, in a press release.
The accident occurred in a tunnel under the Strasbourg railway station: a tram, blocked on an uphill slope by a traffic jam resulting from a demonstration, failed to restart and went backwards, hitting another tram. off.
Traffic disrupted until the end of February
The train did not have a safety system preventing it from rolling backwards, but the origin of the malfunction remains unknown and a technical investigation is being carried out by the land transport accident investigation office.
A first train was able to be evacuated from the tunnel on Friday January 17, and the second should be this Friday evening. Complicated work under a tunnel which prevents the use of lifting equipment or cranes.
-A return to normal on the transport network “does not seem possible before the end of the upcoming school holidays”i.e. at the end of February, warned the Strasbourg Transport Company in a press release on Friday.
Strasbourg, one of the first large French cities to have put a tram network back into service in 1994, had already experienced an accident, in exactly the same place, at the end of October 1998. One tram had already collided with another. in the tunnel under the station, an accident due to excessive speed of one of the two trains, which left 17 injured.
