Metro, Olympics, it’s hot… but it can still be beautiful – Libération

All the players are confident: the Ile-de-France transport networks will hold up during the Olympic Games, despite many inconveniences to be expected. Reassuring but we still have to succeed in making Paris 2024 a popular celebration.

Ready, set, anticipate! Four months before their opening, Valérie Pécresse, the president of the Ile-de-France region, presented on Monday March 25 the transport plan for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. So what ? Nightmare guaranteed or “have faith, everything is working out”? Neither, my captain. Certain lines will of course be overloaded, certain metro stations closed, the wait to access certain sites, or to leave them, will sometimes be multiplied by three. Traveling to work, or returning home at the end of the day, will be more complicated depending on the day, time, location. The question is therefore not whether there will be inconveniences. They are inevitable. The question is whether everything will have been done to ensure that they are acceptable to those who will come to attend the Games, those who have chosen to stay in the capital and its region to enjoy the event, those who, because ‘they will work or cannot take vacation, will have no other choice but to stay there.

On the side of the region, the town hall, the organizing committee, we are confident. Certainly, not all the new lines announced years ago as being in service for the Games will be. But the Olympics will have been a beneficial accelerator of projects essential to improving transport in Ile-de-France. Beyond the transport offer itself, easily accepting travel constraints for a naturally rather grumpy French person will depend on two things. The efforts that will be made to help everyone anticipate their travels, particularly via digital tools, will be essential. But another lever will be just as important: the ability of the organizers (Cojo, State, region, town hall, etc.) to give everyone the feeling that these Olympics are also theirs. It’s simply called Popular Games. London succeeded in this bet twelve years ago. Paris 2024 has four months left to remove this little doubt that is looming.