“Eleven buses were burned throughout Île-de-France, and for the first time, two trams were attacked,” said Valérie Pécresse this Thursday the day after the destruction of a tram from the line T6, completely burned using molotov cocktails in Clamart, in Hauts-de-Seine (92) and the degradation of another train on line T10. To see the damage to it, the elected Ile-de-France went to the depot for the T10 tram line, in Châtenay-Malabry, also in Hauts-de-Seine (92).
In Clamart, the other train requires heavy extrication work. “The train that burned will be cut and cleared today using cranes (…) But it will take time to restore the line,” she lamented, referring to “millions euros of public service gone up in smoke” and estimating at “about five million euros” the price of such a train. “There is no stupider gesture than going to burn down a public service asset. It is unacceptable and nothing justifies it (…) This will cause inconvenience to life for very many Ile-de-France residents”, she continued, very upset.
“We have weeks of work (…) the catenary burned, the train got stuck in the rails”, insisted Valérie Pécresse, who recalls that replacement buses were dispatched to the site to replace this line that normally connects Châtillon-Montrouge to Viroflay. “It’s absurd, stupid and it could have been criminal,” she imagines, when no less than a dozen molotov cocktails were thrown around midnight Wednesday evening in this train where there were still passengers.
In addition to T6 and T10, IDFM explains that a tramway train on the T9 line was hit by mortar fire and that garbage fires damaged the guide rail on the T5 line, in Saint-Denis, in Seine-Saint-Denis (93). So many small incidents causing disruption to some of the traffic on lines T4, T5 and T6.
Visiting RATP headquarters, Minister Delegate for Transport Clément Beaune wanted to bring “a message of support” to “agents of our public services who are always on the front line”, welcoming “a great performance” where the traffic was able to resume. The priorities of the RATP are to “protect our travelers and our agents and also to restart the service as quickly as possible”, assured its CEO Jean Castex.
To avoid any new incident, IDFM took the decision – “at the request of the police headquarters and as a precautionary measure” – to “gradually stop the surface network” of buses and trams no later than 9 p.m. Time at which “their service will be completely interrupted”, underlines the RATP, which specifies that “the metro and RER networks should circulate normally” and invites travelers “to make their arrangements to anticipate their trips now”. “We must protect our drivers and our travelers”, had launched a little earlier Valérie Pécresse on this subject. Several curfews have also been decreed in Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine) but also in Compiègne (Oise).
