A meeting within reach for 12 million Parisians

The Ville Lumiere, the capital of the Enlightenment and the first city to adopt a street lighting system with gas lamps in 1820, opened its first metro line in 1900 for the Universal Exhibition.

With 245 km and 16 lines—mostly underground—the Paris Metro is the third largest in Europe, after London and Madrid. Its network is so extensive that, as the saying goes, every Parisian is within 500 meters of one of its more than 300 stations.

Nevertheless, car traffic is heavily congested, with average travel time up 36% in 2021, in a city where average journeys on public transport (used daily by 26% of the population) are around 50 minutes. But fear not, because Europe's largest sustainable mobility project is on the way.

The Grand Paris Express is a cornerstone of the plan to make Paris carbon neutral by 2050. This network will consist of four loop lines around the city, plus the extension of two existing lines, totalling 200 km, fully in service by 2030.

The strategic axis is Line 16, handling up to 200,000 passengers per day, which means 140,000 fewer vehicles on the road daily and a cut of about 52,000 tonnes in annual CO₂ emissions.

Lot 2 of Line 16 includes 11.1 km of tunnels, lined (for the first time in France) with fibre-reinforced concrete segments, eleven auxiliary shafts  and four stations (Aulnay – Val Francilia, Sevran-Beaudottes, Sevran-Livry et Clichy-Montfermeil), designed by top international architectural firms.

The entire operation will involve excavating 813,000 cubic meters of earth and using approximately 49,000 kilograms of steel arches for tunnel lining.

Overall, Grand Paris Express will make the Paris metropolitan area more compact and accessible, significantly shortening the distances between the centre and the suburbs for more than 12 million Parisians. This will be particularly so for the northern and eastern areas. Residents will see entire municipalities significantly upgraded and will be able to follow the progress of the works, which began in 2019, thanks to an open day programme and the La Fabrique du Métro mini-museum in the Saint-Quen area, where this large, innovative and futuristic project is described and illustrated.