Interview. Metro in Lille. Despite “not obvious conditions”, the CEO of Ilévia excludes any commercial gesture

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It’s a thorny subject, the metro in Lille (North) in 2024. Users’ wallets, too, in this period of inflation. THE Tuesday December 17, 2024and major incident blocked metro line 1, then a few stops, for almost 4 hours. Franck Garçon, the CEO of Iléviagave an interview to Lille news after this new episode. The opportunity to do update on the situation.

The objective of 52 meter trains still in mind

Lille news: Following yesterday’s incident, on which Ilévia has already provided details, we have learned of a decision by the MEL to extend the probationary period for the new autopilot. Concretely, what does this mean for Ilevia?

Franck Garçon: Well, you need to understand what “probationary period” means. It is during this time that we will put in place the new autopilot, in order to accommodate the new 52 meter trains. This will allow for more modern equipment. Which will be a service provided to travelers.

By extending this period, what was decided with the MEL is that we give ourselves more time to run the system through, and be sure that we can definitively remove the old one.

As part of this extension, will there be new stops for the metro service, in the evenings or on weekends?

No. This step is complete. We shot blanks during these periods (at night, evenings and weekends), but blankly we can’t see everything. Since the launch of the new pilot in November, we have observed malfunctions. The most glaring was yesterday morning. The goal is for Alstom, which is the designer of the system, remember, to provide updates that will no longer encounter these problems.

In this matter, we are fully mobilized at Ilévia, with MEL, and with Alstom.

Put resources into fallback solutions

For users, the situation is critical. We feel the rumble with these repeated problems. The question of commercial gesture logically arises. Are there any leads? Do you think about it? Or do you stand your ground?

We put ourselves in the place of users who have been suffering from problems for several months. These are not obvious conditions. We are aware of this, of course. I have already spoken on this. We prefer to put resources into fallback solutions, such as setting up relay buses, to react as best as possible. A whole range of travel support is in place, and it is effective.

I remind you that Ilévia is the operator of an Alstom system, initially. We had also offered a year of V-Lille subscription with the idea of ​​helping users.

Progress on line 2, long in reduced service

There are these problems linked to the autopilot system, but also the one which resulted from the closure of maintenance workshops since last June. An “optimum return” was announced in December. Are we there?

On line 2, we have put the reinforced service back in place. We always have issues to resolve, in workshops. But on the client side, there is no longer any subject. We are within a few seconds of normal frequency, we have kept our commitments.

Do you have anything else to add on these topics?

The main thing is to remember that we are aware of the inconveniences, which they weigh on users. We apologize for that. We are once again mobilized with the MEL and Alstom to sort this out, without losing sight of the objective: the modernized 52-meter train service.

These famous oars are expected…

Yes, we all look forward to them. They are beautiful, waiting to be put into service.

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