These works, which must extend the line to Mantes-la-Jolie, are expected to cost a total of 5.4 billion euros. The President of the Ile-de-France region accuses SNCF network to “despise its financiers”.
Le Monde with AFP
The President of the Ile-de-France Regional Transport Authority, Valérie Pécresse, denounced, Thursday, October 7, an additional cost from SNCF Network of more than 1.7 billion euros on a Branch of the RER E, which will include a deep tunnel between Paris and the Defense.
This site, for which the largest tunnelier gear of France hollow at this moment at 35 meters under the streets of Paris, must prolong the line e to the west of Paris until Nanterre then Mantes-la-Jolie. It was estimated at 3.8 billion but should finally cost 5.4 billion euros, said Valérie Pécresse at Parisian
“SNCF Network does what he wants and despises his funders”, launched the President of Ile-de-France Mobilies and candidate for the presidential candidacy. “We are preying for a permanent blackmail on its part, interruptions of work if we do not have the cash flow. (…) It is unacceptable. This time, we can not pay!”
In questioned Thursday by the France-Presse agency, SNCF Network replies that “exchanges are underway with the funders on the encryption”, without giving its own estimate.
floods, “yellow vests” and Covid-19
“Changes in programs external to the project and additional constraints, including hazards and unexpected, have occurred since the beginning of the work, plus the CVIV-19,” said SNCF network. These hazards “remain today in an envelope of 30% of the initial encryption”.
In particular, the SNCF has cited “two significant floods of the Seine as well as particularly numerous manifestations, especially during the movement of” yellow vests “, which imposed us with dismantments of construction facilities and production stops.”
According to a source close to the file, the SNCF announced this exceeding Wednesday at a technical meeting with the city of Paris, requesting 800 million more euros for the first section (a tunnel connecting Paris-Haussmann and Nanterre) , of which 500 million before December 31, 2021.
Important additional costs had already been announced in early 2021, of the order of 640 million euros. SNCF Network expected new overruns related to the sanitary crisis.
“Technical challenges excluding standards”
Often called Eole, the RER e currently connects Chelles and Tournan (Seine-et-Marne), in the suburbs, at Saint-Lazare station in Paris. It is about prolonging it to Nanterre mid-2023, then up to Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines) in a second step. In particular, it must be funded by the Greater Paris society (1.5 billion) and the region (1.1 billion).
The SNCF stresses that it is “one of the world’s most complex railway infrastructure projects, located in hyper dense zone and under standard-standing technical challenges, including the drilling of A tunnel of 8 km under the Defense. The tunnel “Virginie”, with 11 meters in diameter, should arrive at Haussmann-St Lazare on January 15, 2022.
The President of the Region, as well as the presidents of the departmental councils of the Yvelines and Hauts-de-Seine, which serves the line E, condemned in a common statement this new exceedance.
According to them, SNCF Network is “legally responsible for the cost and financing of this operation” and it is the state that must “directly or indirectly” guarantee it.
Valérie Pécresse intends to request an audit, and in the absence of a parliamentary control mission. “And all this will have to be done this fall. Otherwise, in January, Eole stops,” launched the Chair of Region, and candidates for the investiture of the right to the presidential.