Grand Paris Express - ast last!

[whole diary]

[stuving]

I thought we had a thread about the Grand Paris Express, but apparently not - just a couple of mentions in despatchesposts. It's a really big project, because it's several projects (lines) at the same time.

One of the aspects of it that should familiar from London is that, of the bits of new line originally promised for the Olympics, some have not quite made that deadline. But two bits have, just, and opened a couple of weeks ago (Métro line 11) and today (line 14). Line 11 has been extended to the east, which is not particularly useful Olympicswise.

Line 14 has been extended to the north to St Denis-Pleyel, so will serve the Stade de France. At the south end it now serves Orly airport. Both of those are going to heavily used by Olympic crowds, so will need to work right out of the box. Line 14 is in effect the first of the new high-speed Métro lines, and will be reclassified as part of Grand Paris express when that is a thing.

[Noggin]

If you want an excuse to try out the new Orly extension of Line 14, EasyJet do Bristol to Orly a couple of times a day.

Not only are the flights usually cheaper than CDG, it's usually quite a lot faster to get through Orly as well, particularly on arrival, as you don't get lumped with all the transatlantic passengers.

The other handy thing is that there are now two independent rail options (three if you include the tram) unlike CDG which just has the one RER line - when that's delayed it can be carnage.