“I couldn't take the RER any more, that's why I left Paris,” explains Virginie, referring to the Réseau Express Régional (RER) or regional express network rapid transit system which serves the French capital and its suburbs. However, her relief at leaving behind the issues that beset Paris's RER might be short-lived. Without knowing it, as she boards a train on the Arcachon to Libourne line in south-west France to go to work as a tour guide, she is getting onto yet another urban RER network.
For though the name might not mean much to travellers heading towards the east of the Bordeaux region, the rail line that links Arcachon to Libourne is the first section of a much wider transport project that has been in the planning since the 2010s. This is the Réseau Express Régional Métropolitain de Bordeaux - the city's very own RER.
Since those plans were first drawn up the idea of adapting and exporting the Paris regional transport 'model' to large but less populated urban areas has gained ground, and has now been adopted by central government itself. In a video posted on social media on November 22nd 2022, President Emmanuel Macron declared his desire to “develop a network of RERs, a network of urban trains” in ten of the country's metropolitan areas.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The Bordeaux network, which began in 2017, will be rolled out in different stages up to 2028. The revolutionary part of the plan was achieved in December 2020. This was the service which crosses the Bordeaux region, linking the lines that previously went from the city centre to Arcachon to the west and Libourne to the east. Since then regional trains still stop at Bordeaux - but it is no longer the terminus.
Signs of overuse
“It's now jam-packed,” says Manon, a secondary school pupil and regular traveller who has seen the number of passengers increase each year. “It's full in the morning and evenings,” confirms Audrey, a social sciences teacher sitting around ten yards away. There are clearly lots of people using these new services - perhaps even too many. In the driver's cab, his words almost drowned out by the noise the train makes as it starts, Michel says he is worried. A railway worker since 2001 and a high-speed train driver since 2015 after a career that began in freight trains, Michel believes the line is starting to show signs of overuse, suggesting it is becoming a victim of its own success.
“There was certainly investment in 2016, with double-decker [carriages] which have greater capacity,” he says. “But that's starting to be insufficient,” says the railway worker, who is torn between satisfaction at the popularity of the service and concern that the situation may be getting out of hand, with trains that were designed to take more than 400 passengers.
The Nouvelle-Aquitaine regional authority, whose area includes Bordeaux and which has responsibility for transport, accepts there are capacity issues. “Sometimes there are far too many people [on this line] so we'll have to add two carriages,” admits Renaud Lagrave, regional council vice-president in charge of transport. But this change will not be made for another two years. “That's the time needed to complete the work to lengthen the platforms that we have committed to,” says the regional authority.
'I've changed my habits'
Watching the passengers come and go on his train at the station in Bordeaux, Michel still seems surprised just how many people there are. “It's quite striking, coming after Covid,” the driver says. Tour guide Virginie, who travels from one end of the Gironde - the département or county in which Bordeaux is located - to the other, is one of the line's new passengers. “I've changed my habits,” she explains, proud to be using her car less - despite the problems that this can involve. Slightly irritated, she adds: “Someone comes to fetch me because the train only goes a far as Libourne and not Saint-Émilion.”
A desire to be environmentally responsible is certainly one reason why she is happy to use her car less, but she is also keen to avoid sitting in traffic jams. “After all, we're in the second most congested city after Paris, even though Bordeaux is around the ninth biggest city in terms of population,” she explains. Virginie is exasperated by a statistic she read recently which suggests that regular drivers in the conurbation spend the equivalent of “seven days a year in traffic jams”.
Other services, too, have become victims of their own success. The second stage in the Bordeaux RER network, the line which connect the city to Saint-Mariens-Saint-Yzan to the north, is full to bursting point. When passengers buy a ticket for it online a message now informs them that “this train is regularly very busy” and invites them “if you want, and for greater travelling comfort, to take another [train]”.
Once on board you soon realise that the app message from train operators the SNCF is not lying. A significant number of passengers are having to stand, with others sitting on their bags on the floor, worn out after their day at work. “Usually it's a little less busy on a Wednesday,” says Stéphanie, a regular on the line since 2020, who has been lucky enough to find a fold down seat. She says that plans to increase the number of trains in 2028 are certainly necessary. “Sometimes people are forced to stay on the platform and wait for the next train,” she explains.
Passenger numbers are in fact pretty astonishing. The stops this service makes are often in small communities with just a few thousand inhabitants. The car park is packed at each station.
'Economic expatriates from Bordeaux'
“People don't go out 50km for the fun of living in the countryside,” says Jean-Baptiste Rozier, a regular user of the line and secretary-general of the passengers' federation the Fédération Nationale des Associations d’Usagers des Transports (FNAUT) for the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. “Many have been forced to leave Bordeaux because of house prices,” he says. “The north Gironde has always been the poor relation when it comes to transport policy.”
The phenomenon of Bordeaux's workers being forced to live further and further away from the city itself is a growing one. The initial stage of the Bordeaux RER project sought to open up the rural areas that surround the conurbation. In 2019, for example, an express bus route was created to link Bordeaux to Créon, a small town of 4,500 inhabitants.
This bus takes between 30 and 50 minutes to go from Bordeaux to the small town. At the Créon end of the route buildings are sprouting up, cranes have become a regular feature of the landscape and the bus passes through some brand-new housing estates. “It's really becoming more populated,” says Véronique Corpou, a woman from Paris who recently moved to Créon, and who uses the bus even though she has a car.
In the little town itself the transport situation is complex. “You can't eradicate the car, that's impossible,” says Emmanuel Gaye, a 'destination advisor' at Créon's tourist office. “In those communities right on the edge of conurbations you can replace all cars but not here,” he insists. He says that the universally-recognised success of the bus route, which promises a bus every 15 minutes during peak times, is linked to the arrival of a new demographic group. These are people who have become “expatriates from Bordeaux for economic reasons”.
When he is asked to give the reasons why the service has become so successful, bus driver Silverio Clienbele, who has driven on this route since it started in 2019, replies succinctly: “Traffic jams, the environment and the wallet.”
The very different example of Strasbourg
“The main argument for taking public transport is, after all, the price of petrol,” says Christian Broucaret, president of the FNAUT passenger federation for the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Like everyone, he expects the use of express trains and buses to grow while the price of petrol at the pumps continues to rise.
The pensioner, who is also an advisor to FNAUT at a national level, approves of the investment that has so far been made in the transport system. “We have laid down bricks here one by one and the foundations are solid,” says Christian Broucaret, who has had to become something of an expert on public transport issues. He points to the very different situation in the north-eastern city of Strasbourg. “It was done back to front there, there was all this media hype in particular, they didn't recruit anyone and the [rail operator] SNCF was presented with a fait accompli.”
The result is that having announced the launch of its RER amid great fanfare just a month after President Macron's comments, and having promised an extra 800 trains a week, the regional authority there has had to reconsider its plans. Only 400 extra trains over the week were laid on because of a shortage of drivers, and there was chaos on the city's transport network.
Meanwhile back in the south west, though the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region says its approach is forging ahead “at our pace and without great fanfare”, it cannot claim victory just yet. In Bordeaux the growing population, fuel prices and the banning of some vehicles from designated 'low emission zones' are likely to put extra pressure on the transport network. Sitting in his cab, train driver Michel foresees another problem. “It's already hard to find railway workers,” he says. “Will there be enough of us?”
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter