After the disastrous organization near the Stade de France for the final of the Champions League, on May 28, the SNCF and the RATP explained themselves this Tuesday before the Senate.
During the hearing, the SNCF indicated that it had not been alerted when the large flow of supporters from the RER D, which it operates, caused congestion at the gates of the stadium in Saint-Denis. “We had no alert on the subject ‘there are problems, we are no longer absorbing, so hold the RER D'”, explained Sylvie Charles, director of Transilien (the branch of the SNCF in charge of trains from the Parisian suburbs). However, its services transmitted every half hour to the organizers the number of supporters counted at the exit of the two RER stations serving the stadium, on lines B and D, she noted.
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The SNCF counted 37,000 people, “more than three times what we usually have” on the RER D, and 6,200, “a third of what we usually have”, on the RER B. Traffic of the RER B having been affected by a strike of the RATP agents, many supporters reported on line D. And the filtering devices on arrival at the stadium were overwhelmed.
In this regard, RATP Deputy Director General Philippe Martin noted that a meeting with the authorities and organizers on May 24 “clearly specified the transport plan (and) clearly indicated that we were going to postpone part of flows from line B to line D”. “There was an AFP dispatch on May 26 which clearly indicates that the RATP invites travelers to use line D as a priority,” he added, noting that a new “situation update” had been made with the French Football Federation on May 27, the day before the match.
“Surprised” by the statements of the FFF
Philippe Martin also said he was “a little surprised at the statements of the French Football Federation”. Its director of institutional affairs, Erwan Le Prévost, had indeed denounced the lack of information from the RATP, during a previous hearing in the Senate, on June 9. “If we had had real-time information on the diversion of flows from RER B to RER D, we could have redesigned our system at the start of the afternoon. The prefecture did not have the information either,” he said.
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