Fifteen days without metro. Line 14 of the Paris network – which crosses the capital from south-east to north-west – will completely close again for more than two weeks starting this Sunday, February 11. The interruption will last until February 25, the end of the school holidays in zone C. It will make it possible to prepare its extension to Orly airport to the south and Saint-Denis-Pleyel to the north, and to “test the system of new generation automatic piloting” which must be deployed on the line, explains the RATP.
These tests will make it possible to “put the new generation system to the test on the entire line, for several consecutive days to simulate situations close to the nominal operation of the line”. But “due to the duration of the tests, these tests cannot be carried out during long nights or weekends”, justifies the RATP.
The two extensions of line 14 must open before this summer’s Olympic Games, which comes at the cost of long closures with a strong impact on users: 28 days of total interruption since October, and another 26 to come after these February vacation.
In particular, it will be closed every weekend in March (except March 2 and 3), one week during the April holidays (from 7 to 14), the weekend of April 27 and 28, the bridge from 8 to May 12 and again on the weekend of May 25 and 26. Not to mention early evening closings, from 10 p.m., Monday to Thursday, every week.
During these interruptions, a bus is set up to serve the stations between Gare de Lyon and Olympiades, but nothing on the rest of the line. Users must then juggle other lines in the network to complete their journey, avoiding line 13 – which serves a similar area to the north – which is regularly saturated.