Paris 2024 Olympic Games: Pecresse calls for reduction of track gauge and length of opening ceremony

Three hours maximum. This is exactly the duration that Valerie Pecresse proposed for the famous opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, scheduled for July 26 in the Seine. The president of the Ile-de-France region spoke on Tuesday before the Games’ mobility committee, chaired by Transport Minister Clément Beaune.

Valerie Pecresse, president of the transport organization Île-de-France Mobilités, initially assured that the Ile-de-France metro and RER network would be able to withstand the shock. “Thanks to the transport reinforcement that we are carrying out during the Games, in general +15% and up to 50% on the lines serving the venues, the capacity everywhere exceeds what is necessary, including taking into account daily traffic,” she confirmed.

But the elected official also warned the state and organizers at the table Tuesday about the problem with the opening ceremony. “If we are afraid of too much oversaturation in certain places, the only option is to control the schedule of events,” she warned, citing the opening ceremony, which is causing concern due to the 6 km of piers that need to be secured and the hundreds of thousands of spectators that needs to be protected. be sent to crowded metro stations, and on a vacation evening.

His decision? “The opening ceremony should start as early as possible, ideally from 19:30 to 22:30 maximum, and its capacity should be controlled at a maximum of 400,000 spectators to ensure a good evacuation of spectators at the end, since many stations near the Seine will be closed to avoid crowds of people. The evacuation will last several hours, and too much metro at night means less the next day,” explains Valerie Pecresse. Neither the state nor the organizers have yet reported any official assessment.

Precautionary measures

More generally, the region’s president warns about the safety of the Olympics. She therefore asks for the renewal of legislative measures regarding transport policing, and wishes to retain explosive detection dogs in the RATP and SNCF teams. And it proposes to provide 45,000 free transport cards during the Olympics for police and military reinforcements who will come from the provinces to provide security for the event, as well as providing 4,500 boarding places in Ile-de-France high schools for these security forces.