The GPE (Grand Paris Express), known as the "project of the century", aims to facilitate public transport between Paris and its peri-urban area, which is very poorly served today. No inhabitant of a Paris suburb should be more than 2 kilometres from a railway station by 2030.
Public transport in the Île de France
The GPE project was born as a result of a no-appeal assessment:
- In Île de France, more than 8 million passengers use public transport every day.
- Suburban trains account for 40 percent of passenger traffic on only 10 percent of the rail network.
- Between 2007 and 2017, the number of users increased by 21 percent.
Faced with these figures, the high authorities considered it necessary to reflect on the development and modernization of networks: the Grand Paris Express project was born.
The project in concrete terms
The emergence of 68 groundbreaking stations
The 'new generation' stations which will be created thanks to the GPE will no longer be simple buildings where passengers leave and get on trains, but are real multimodal exchanges where aeroplanes, bicycles or electric cars will wait for users when they finish their journey. Passengers will also be able to benefit from the services and shops offered by these buildings while waiting for its correspondences. The design of these stations was entrusted to an architect and an artist whose mission is to create architectural works of art, reflecting on construction techniques that are economical in terms of impact.
The environmental commitments of the GPE
There are numerous eco-commitments based on the project incurring a minimal impact on the environment. The stations will consume as little energy as possible thanks to state-of-the-art technology. 85 percent of the new lines will be underground and their routes will bypass areas of high environmental importance. As for the sites, they will also be eco-responsible by minimising pollution and recycling the 43 million tonnes of rubble that will be generated by this gargantuan project.
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