Strasbourg
Announced with drums and trumpets, the European Metropolitan Express Network (Reme) of Strasbourg, put into service on December 11, 2022, had a chaotic start. And the social movements during the winter did not help matters. Five months later, with only 600 more trains, we are far from the 814 additional TERs planned per week. And there is no longer any question, neither to the SNCF, nor to the Grand Est region and the Eurometropolis which put 14.7 million euros in the operation, of the 1,072 trains planned for the end of August. Worse. For some users, the situation has deteriorated. “On the Sélestat-Strasbourg line, we withdrew two trains at rush hour, morning and evening, which had existed for fourteen years,” laments a regular, recounting her daily hassle, “the lack of information at the station” and “ these TER full to bursting, which fall behind with each stop…” “The SNCF was not with go”, regrets Alain Jund, vice-president ecologist of the Eurometropolis, in charge of mobility.
A year ago, alerted upstream by the railway unions to “the lack of equipment and drivers”, the president of the regional council was worried about “the ability of the SNCF to meet deadlines”. The objective was to set up scheduled services, from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. But the Eurometropolis would have pushed to the wheel to offer an alternative to owners of cars banned on January 1, 2023.
Faced with the exasperation of the elected officials whom it now meets every fortnight, the SNCF admitted in January that “the complexity of the project had been underestimated”. “The transition from a TER service to a metropolitan express network involves a complete overhaul of the transport plan”, explains today the operator who, after audits, has “learned many lessons from this launch”. There remains the specificity of the Strasbourg station which, “in addition to the TGV and freight trains, sees 150 TER more daily passes than that of Lyon-Part-Dieu, and double that of Bordeaux-Saint-Jean”. The new traffic management operational center in the station should make traffic more fluid.
“From the perspective of carbon-free mobility, the Metropolitan Express Networks are a good solution for large cities”, underlines Thibaud Philipps, vice-president (LR) of the regional council in charge of transport. On condition of “going there in stages and defining the new timetables, based on the constraints of the territories, by involving users and elected officials”. What he started doing…
“There have been improvements,” recognizes François Giordani, president of Fnaut Grand Est, bringing together 43 user associations, who insists on the need to “regain the confidence of users, otherwise it will be a missed opportunity”. “By early July, we are aiming for 3,791 trains to circulate around Strasbourg, i.e. 640 trains or 20% more compared to 2022”, undertakes the SNCF, knowing, like the Region and the Eurometropolis, that “everything will be decided at the start of the school year”.
