FRANCE: The length of the Paris metro’s rubber-tyred Line 11 was almost doubled with the opening on June 13 of a 6 km six-station extension from Mairie-des-Lilas to Rosny-Bois-Perrier.
The maximum speed on the extension is 70 km/h, giving an end-to-end journey time of 25 min for the 14 km from Rosny to the central hub at Châtelet, compared with around 55 min previously.
The extension is expected to carry 85 000 passengers/day. It currently offers an interchange with RER E at Rosny-Bois-Perrier. From 2027 it will connect with tram T1 at Romainville-Carnot, and from 2031 with Grand Paris Express orbital Line 15 at Rosny-Bois-Perrier; these two stations are expected to become the busiest on the extension.
The line now has 500 staff, including 200 drivers and 240 at stations.
Construction
The main civil works were undertaken by a joint venture of NGE, Demathieu & Bard Construction, Impresa Pizzarotti, Implenia, GTS, Franki Foundations and Atlas Fondations.
The contract awarded in 2016 included the construction of four stations — La Dhuys, Montreuil-Hôpital, Romainville-Carnot and Serge Gainsbourg — three ancillary structures and 3·8 km of bored tunnel. Some of the stations were built as rectangular boxes up to 30 m deep, but limited surface space at La Dhuys and Romainville required the excavation of horizontal caverns 50 m and 60 m long.
Razel-Bec and Sefi Intrafor built the station at Rosny-Bois-Perrier and a further 1⋅6 km of tunnel using diaphragm walls.
NGE subsidiary TSO installed the railway systems.
Coteaux-Beauclair station was designed by architect Marc Mimram. It is situated on a 650 m viaduct accessed by a 5·5% gradient. Pierre Florent, RATP’s Managing Director of the Line 11 extension project, told Metro Report International at the opening celebrations that this was close to the maximum gradient for a rubber-tyred metro.
Alstom has supplied 32 five-car MP14 trainsets with a capacity of 562 passengers to operate on Line 11. These provided a 40% decrease in energy consumption and a 25% increase in capacity compared with the ageing MP59 sets they replaced.
A further seven trainsets are to be delivered by early 2025, which will enable headways to be reduced from 2 min 10 sec to 1 min 45 sec.
Alstom also supplied the Octys CBTC onboard equipment for GoA2 operation, while Siemens Mobility provided the lineside systems.
Costs
The extension has cost €1·084bn to build, plus €214m for upgrading the original Line 11. This was funded by the Ile-de-France region, Société du Grand Paris, the national government, Seine-Saint-Denis département, RATP and the city of Paris.
The 39 MP14 trainsets cost €310m, funded by transport authority Ile-de-France-Mobilités and operator RATP (26%). The annual operating costs which will be covered by IdFM are put at €27m.
