metro lines 16 and 17 escape the RATP

It’s a turning point: except for a huge surprise, this Tuesday, May 30, Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM), the organizing authority for transport in the Paris region, will approve the allocation of two of the four future lines by the board of directors. from the Grand Paris Express to Keolis. This group, 70% controlled by SNCF, alongside the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec, will be responsible for managing lines 16 and 17, which will gradually serve the north-eastern suburbs (1) from the end of 2026. .

A first

This is the first time that part of the Paris metro, created in 1900, has escaped its historical control. To respond to the call for tenders, made compulsory by European legislation, the RATP, via its subsidiary RATP Dev, joined forces with the industrialist Alstom and the Singaporean transport company ComfortDelGro. A third player was in the running: the Milan Public Transport Company, associated with the French engineering company Egis.

Prices, performance indicators, social conditions… The criteria that led to the choice of IDFM are multiple. “The fact that Keolis went into battle alone could also have played a role,” said Arnaud Aymé, partner at Sia Partners, a transport specialist. “Because decision-making is more delicate within a consortium. However, the institutional environment is already very complicated. »

RATP keeps control of infrastructure

In fact, the legislator not only entrusted the project management of the new lines (from 15 to 18) to the Société du Grand Paris, but also automatically assigned the management of these infrastructures to the RATP. In other words, on the 16 and 17, Keolis will have to work in good agreement with its competitor to run its trains and operate the stations.

A metro is immobilized in a tunnel? It can be a defect on the rolling stock, the responsibility of its operator, but also a signaling problem, the responsibility of the infrastructure manager… Keolis says it has planned solid protocols to deal with all situations.

“The match did indeed take place”

The complexity of this architecture, unprecedented for an automatic metro, in any case dissuaded another transport player, Transdev, from finalizing its application. The subsidiary of the Caisse des dépôts et consignations could have “the feeling that the dice were loaded”, analyzes Gilles Dansart, director of the Mobilettre newsletter. Be that as it may, underlines this specialist in mobility, between the various companies in the running, “the match did indeed take place”.

It must be said that Keolis is the world leader in autonomous metro, with around ten lines (Lille, Rennes, Lyon, London, Dubai, etc.), and that it is also already present in Île-de-France with lines of tramway and with 25 to 30% of the large suburban bus network, liberalized in 2020.

“A liberal, ideological, demagogic choice”

Valérie Pécresse, LR president of the region and of IDFM, says she regularly bets on competition to improve the quality of transport. It would therefore have been surprising if these two new lines, 16 and 17, were entrusted to the incumbent operator. Keolis will also manage the future Saint-Denis Pleyel station, strategic, since it will gradually accommodate lines 14 (extended), 15, 16 and 17.

“A liberal, ideological, demagogic choice”, denounces Frédéric Ruiz, president of the national federation CFE-CGC transport, from the RATP. “An error, adds Jacques Baudrier, communist member of IDFM. Because the strength of the RATP is to be able to play the solidarity between its networks: if a metro line is stopped, it can strengthen its bus offer and vice versa. »

2040, end of the RATP monopoly on the 14 current lines

At the RATP, we console ourselves by eyeing the biggest piece of the cake, line 15, which should be allocated no later than this summer. This line alone, which will be brought into service gradually from the end of 2025, will be longer (75 km) than the 16 and 17 placed end to end (just over 50 km). “Surrounding Paris, rich in numerous interconnections with other metro lines, it will be the only one to really offer mass traffic”, observes someone close to the file.

In terms of turnover, lines 16 and 17 should represent a total of around fifty million euros per year. The 15, it should bring a little more. Amounts however quite modest, compared to the overall turnover of the RATP (6.1 billion euros) and Keolis (6.7 billion euros).

In any case, lines 16 and 17 offer the Franco-Quebec group the opportunity to confirm its know-how as a metro operator, before a distant and otherwise crucial deadline: the opening to competition, in 2040, of the fourteen current Parisian lines. .

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