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Systra News
The RER E expands westwards in Paris with SYSTRA
Line E of the Regional Express Network (RER) is being extended to the west of the Paris region: it has gained 3 stations and now reaches Nanterre - La Folie station, at the foot of the La Défense business district, after more than 10 years of assignments for SYSTRA.
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Since 6 May 2024, the Paris region’s newest and deepest railway line has also become the most interconnected in the entire area. The extension of RER E to the west marks the culmination of a project to improve east-west services and relieve congestion on RER A, the busiest train line in Europe.
Eventually, more than half a million passengers will use the RER E every day.
This extension consists of a deep tunnel under Paris and three new stations built in dense and complex environments, highly technical infrastructures that foreshadow what the Grand Paris Express will be like in the coming years. We are proud to have accompanied SNCF Réseau for more than 10 years, from the preliminary design phases through to the final stages of testing and commissioning. I would like to congratulate all the SYSTRA France teams who have contributed so much to making this extension a success.
Annelise Baudouin, Director of FIT (Railways), SYSTRA France
A decade of multiple assignments for SYSTRA
SYSTRA France’s teams have been involved in the project from the very outset: after being appointed project manager for the preliminary design phase from 2011 to 2012, SNCF Réseau called on our services from 2013 to 2024 to provide project management assistance for the transport system, for the entire line and at all stages of development. From steering the overall planning to managing all the interfaces, including operations management, and monitoring the implementation of the various systems and sub-systems, our teams were hard at work within tight deadlines and despite the pandemic during part of the project.
Most recently, SYSTRA France carried out the integration tests, with a 4-month campaign of dynamic tests followed by pre-operations carried out by SNCF Réseau operators trained by SYSTRA Académie. We continued to assist operations until commercial service began in May 2024. At the beginning of 2024, the FIT department’s engineering structures expertise unit also won the audit of all EOLE’s underground stations (3 new, 2 existing): located at a depth of more than 30 metres, these cathedral stations accommodate tens of thousands of passengers a day in dense urban environments with severe water constraints.
In addition, SYSTRA helped to preserve the flora and fauna in and around the line. In particular, our ecologists moved the habitat of protected bats, the Yarrow Broomrape and the Wall Whitlowgrass to forest plots acquired for the occasion, and marked out the rights-of-way of the new RER E garage at Issou-Gargenville to prevent their destruction by site machinery. Nesting boxes and tarpaulins for amphibians were deployed near wetlands.
A new operating system deployed with SYSTRA
RER E will be equipped with a new operating system, NExTEO. It will enable automatic operation on the central section of the line, from Rosa Park to Nanterre – La-Folie, in order to achieve maximum speed and regularity. In 2011, SYSTRA was chosen to lead a general project management consortium made up of SNCF and RATP engineers to define the NExTEO system’s define NExTEO’s specifications and interfaces. The system is currently being deployed, which is why the extension will take place in two stages:
In 2024 as far as Nanterre for the first section, with operation limited to off-peak hours until the end of the year;
At the end of 2026 for the entire line as far as Poissy and Mantes-la-Jolie, in western Paris.
This new system will also enable overlapping operation: designed from the outset of the project, this system prevents an incident from spreading to the whole line, and therefore ensures better quality of service for all passengers.
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