Welcome To The Underground Jungle
Students’ Ultimate Challenge To Become Real Parisians
What is 220 kilometers of lines long, has more than 300 stations and carries over 4.16 million travelers a day? The Paris transport network! If you are one of these passengers, you will understand the struggle of using the Metro and the RER in Paris, and if you are new, here is a sneak peek of the history of public transport in Paris.
The first Metro line was created in 1900, and since then it has grown into 21 different lines which serve more than 383 stops. With a scope that wide, it is obvious that it would not be a piece of cake for the RATP to ensure that everything runs smoothly when it comes to using the metro and the RER. Crowded trains, delays, peak hours, these are just a handful of the issues each student in Paris has to overcome in their daily life.
We interviewed an engineer working at the RATP and also Parisian students on their personal experiences and thoughts on the Metro and RER.
We met with a Project Manager for the underground extension and renovation of RER stations to learn more about what is going on behind the scenes. He has been working for 5 years at RATP, a big and old company which was created in 1948.
“RATP does more than transport people, it manages projects to extend or renovate Metro and RER lines. It is very innovative”.
Indeed, Metro line 12 has been extended and new stations have been built to contribute to the Grand Paris Express Project, which is scheduled to open in 2030.
We asked him if he uses the Metro or the RER to go to work, and whether he enjoys it or not, to which he replied that he takes both the Metro and the RER to go to work.
“I don’t particularly enjoy taking the Metro, but it is a much more reliable means of transportation than cars in the Ile de France.”
Employees at RATP who use public transportation daily are not fond of it, but it remains the best option to get around Paris easily, cheaply and fastly.
When we told him that, in our experience, people tend to complain a lot about issues on the RER and Metro lines, he said
“There are not so many problems on RER lines compared to the number of people transported every day”
With more than 1 million passengers a day, both RER A and RER B are the biggest train lines in Europe. There are trains every 3 minutes during rush hours, a record in Europe considering their size. We tend to forget that delays are not only due to RATP malfunctions but also to travellers forgetting their belongings and obstructing the closing of the doors or standing on the rails.
As there is a high frequency of trains, a single incident can easily and quickly cause delays on the whole traffic. Of course, there can also be technical incidents, like with any other train in the world, and let’s not forget that some lines are quite old, such as the RER B which is more than 100 years old.
Some of the actions taken by the RATP include scheduling works during summer to impact people as little as possible; doing preventive maintenance with trains equipped with X-ray scanning devices to detect and prevent problems. Additionally, you may have noticed that RATP has launched a campaign to remind passengers not to forget their luggage to prevent disruptions.
As for the students, what stood out the most was a feeling that there are far too many passengers using the Metro and RER lines, which impacts their student life as they arrive late and sometimes teachers refuse to let them join the class.
Here is a mash-up of students’ thoughts on this underground jungle.
This video discusses students’ feelings when they commute by the Parisian metro, and also reflects on what they experienced in the metro when they first came to Paris.
Ranking of the best and worst Metro lines based on a 47 students panel.
Finally, the main targets of our article, on one han, are teachers for example but also managers, Referrer of internship or apprenticeship, you and us. But of course, the RATP company to alert on the difficulties encountered by students and especially this major component of our Parisian student life. On the other hand, we target students to show them that they are not alone in this, that the impact of the RATP incidents is felt for a very big amount, not to say by a majority of students.
Moreover, the RATP is not always at fault and is even making efforts to improve its lines, and that for a network of more than a hundred years and considering the number of lines, services offered for students, they are not doing so bad and their network still makes our life easier.
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What about you ? Tell us your favorite and worst Metro line.
Written by Ziqin YAN, Fatima Zohra HADOUNI, Léa DAVADANT, Aléxis LEFÉBURE, Nasserine SAMAROU, Suzette SENZONGO.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminating the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
