RER A

A train entering Charles de Gaulle - Étoile station
Route length:	108 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Passengers daily	1,400,000
Stations	46
opening	1969

The RER A line is the oldest part of the RER network in Paris and passes under the city center in a west-east direction. With up to around 1.4 million passengers a day, it is one of the most frequently used rail connections worldwide and even the most popular rail line in all of Europe. The first inner-city section between the stations Vincennes and Nation went into operation on December 12, 1969 as a replacement for a parallel railway line; Two months later, a tunnel section followed in the west of the city from La Défense to Charles-de-Gaulle-Étoile. On December 9, 1977, the previously separate outer branches were finally connected by the central tunnel section, which is considered to be the "hour of birth" of the RER. It was the first railway connection that did not end at one of the Paris terminus, but instead crossed the city diametrically.

Route

RER line A train at Neuville Université station

As with all RER lines, the route consists of several branches:

In the west of Paris:

• to Saint-Germain-en-Laye ( RATP ) ( A 1 )
• to Cergy-Le Haut ( SNCF ) ( A 3 )
• to Poissy ( SNCF ) ( A 5 )

In East Paris ( RATP only ):

• to Boissy-Saint-Léger ( A 2 )
• to Marne-la-Vallée - Chessy / Disneyland ( A 4 )

The trains run between the stations “ Vincennes ” and “ Nanterre Préfecture” on the same route and then use different routes to their respective destination.

In downtown Paris, the RER A runs north of the Seine from the Gare de Lyon via Châtelet - Les Halles under the Champs-Élysées along the direction of La Défense and Nanterre Préfecture, where the routes are divided.

Route of the RER line A

Legend 5 Cergy - Le Haut (A 3 / U) 5 Cergy-Saint-Christophe 5 Cergy-Préfecture Oise 5 Neuville University 5 Conflans- Fin-d'Oise His 5 Archères-Ville to Mantes-la-Jolie 5 Poissy (A 5 / T) 5 Archères-Grand-Cormier 4 Maisons-Laffitte His 4 Sartrouville to Argenteuil 4 Houilles-Carrières-sur-Seine to Saint-Lazare His 4 Saint-Germain-en-Laye (A 1 / Z) His 4 Le Vèsinet-Le Pecq (X) 4 Le Vèsinet Center 4 Chatou-Croissy His 3 Rueil-Malmaison (Y) 3 Nanterre-Ville 3 Nanterre University to Saint-Lazare 3 Nanterre -Préfecture (F, J) 3 La Dèfense - Grande Arche (B) His 1 Charles-de-Gaulle - Etoile (G) 1 Auber (C) heading north 1 Châtelet Les Halles To the south 1 Gare de Lyon To the south 1 nation (P) Gare de la Bastille 2 Vincennes (S) 3 Fontenay-sous-Bois 3 Nogent-sur-Marne 3 Joinville-le-Pont (E) 3 Saint-Maur-Créteil 3 Le Parc de Saint-Maur Grande Ceinture after Noisy-le-Sec 3 Champigny Saint-Maur 3 La Varenne-Chennevières (R) Marne 4 Sucy-Bonneuil Grande Ceinture according to Orly 4 Boissy-Saint-Léger (A2 / N) 4 to Vernail l'Etang 3 Val de Fontenay 3 Neuilly-Plaisance Marne 4 Bry-sur-Marne 4 Noisy-le-Grand-Mont d'Est (D) 4 Noisy Champs Champy Nesles 5 Noisiel Le Luzard 5 Lognes Le Mandinet 5 Torcy (O) 5 Bussy-Saint-Georges 5 Serris-Montévrain LGV Interconnexion Est 5 Marne-la-Vallée - Chessy (A 4 / Q) LGV Interconnexion Est

history

The route to Saint-Germain

The railway line from Paris to Saint-Germain-en-Laye is the oldest in the Paris region (and the third oldest in all of France). The first section was opened on August 24, 1837, and continuous rail traffic began ten years later in 1847. Terminal station in the city was a predecessor of today's Saint Lazare station on Boulevard de Batignolles. As a result, an extensive suburban railway network developed from the end of the 19th century, driven by two railway companies. In 1888 the station was used by 26 million passengers a year. Before the First World War , the operating company of the Chemin de fer de Paris à Saint-Germain was preparing the electrification of its route and intended to structurally separate suburban traffic from long-distance traffic. The First World War prevented this project.

After the war, the flow of commuters increased rapidly, which is why the old project was resumed. In 1927 the line to Saint-Germain was electrified. The original plan to move the terminus in Saint-Germain underground was not implemented. In the year the SNCF was founded , 1937, the route to Saint-Germain already had 40 million passengers; after the Second World War , the number of commuters continued to rise massively. In 1960 the Saint-Lazare station reached its capacity limits again. On the route to Saint-Germain alone, there were now 250,000 passengers a day.

The route to Boissy-Saint-Léger

While the suburban network in the west of the city grew early, only a few routes were initially built in the east. The planning for the construction of a line to Vincennes began when Napoleon III. opened the forest of Vincennes to the public. On November 22, 1859, the 17 km long route to Vincennes, starting from the small train station Gare de la Bastille , was opened. The track was an immediate success. In 1875 the route was extended to Brie-Comte-Robert , two years later it was connected to the Grande Ceinture .

The great success prompted the operating company to extend the route even further. In 1892 the line was finally extended to Verneuil l'Etang. However, this section was not a great success. The area was and remained rural and therefore always had few passengers. Immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War, almost the entire line from the Grande Ceinture was shut down, only one station, Boissy-Saint-Léger, continued to operate.

After the war, the line was reopened to Brie, but in 1946 it was finally shortened to Boissy-Saint-Léger. A five-kilometer section of this route was later reused for the construction of the LGV Sud-Est .

The first tunnel sections

After the war, the RATP mainly dealt with the repair of war damage and the repair of lines and rolling stock, but at the end of the 1950s it began to revisit old pre-war plans to expand the local transport network beyond the city limits. Even before the war, the then operating company of the Metro CMP had recognized that it would be necessary to extend metro lines to the surrounding area or even to integrate existing railway lines into their own network. These considerations have now been supported by the steadily increasing number of passengers and construction projects such as the planned La Défense office district or the five planned Villes nouvelles on the outskirts.

In 1961 the government provided two million francs for the construction of a tunnel from the direction of Nanterre and La Défense through the city center to Nation. It was also planned to integrate the route from Saint-Germain from Nanterre into the tunnel and thus on the one hand to offer an attractive commuter connection to the western suburbs for the planned office city and on the other hand to relieve the Saint-Lazare station, which is reaching its capacity limits.

In 1963 it was finally decided to include the railway line to Vincennes in this planning. The routes to Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Boissy-Saint-Léger have been transferred to the RATP. However, there was initially no construction. A symbolic groundbreaking ceremony was set in Neuilly in 1961, but in 1964 there were just 500 meters of tunnel. The costs exploded, as a result of which management personnel at the RATP were replaced and the entire project was reorganized. From now on, the construction work proceeded largely without disruption. Existing stations on the outer branches were modernized and new tracks were built solely for local traffic, while the first tunnel sections were built under the center of Paris.

Bastille station was closed on September 12, 1965, and trains from Vincennes continued to run through the new tunnel to Nation station.

At the western end, on February 20, 1970, an island operation was initially set up between the stations Ètoile and La Défense, which was extended to Auber a year and a half later. The tunnel section to Nanterre was not completed until October 1, 1972, and the line to Saint-Germain was integrated. This had to be converted from busbar to overhead line operation beforehand.

Closing the gap

When the project was officially resolved, Châtelet was intended as a transfer point for other regional train lines. However, a broad protest front formed against this project and the construction of the central tunnel section was initially postponed. Critics of the project feared a concentration of new office and commercial buildings around the station. They also predicted that the transfer hub would be heavily frequented and even overloaded. You should be right. The high construction costs were also heavily criticized. Nevertheless, the construction of the station was finally decided in 1972. The station was built below the site of the former Parisian market halls, which became obsolete when the market moved to Rungis . As early as 1971, a large part of the market halls was demolished amid major protests.

A total of another five and a half kilometers of tunnel had to be built. In addition to the Châtelet station, another station was built under the Gare de Lyon . On December 9, 1977, line A finally started operating.

The route to Marne-la-Vallée

RER class MS 61 train in the original color scheme at Torcy station , 1982

In 1965, the Schéma Directeur , a kind of supraregional urban development plan, proposed the construction of five new suburbs in order to relieve the city of Paris from the forecast massive population growth. In the course of this plan, an efficient local transport network was proposed that would connect these suburbs with the center. The airports should also be served by this system. Line A, which was still under construction at that time, was included in this project.

Line A was to have a branch to Cergy-Pontoise in the west and a second branch to Marne-la-Vallée in the east . Construction of the eastern branch began in 1971. The line was integrated into the planning of the suburbs in such a way that none of their future residents have to travel more than 800 meters to the next RER station. On December 10, 1977, one day after the inner-city gap had been closed, the line to Noisy-Le-Grand was opened. On December 19, 1980, the line to Torcy was extended, and on March 31, 1992, the last stretch to Marne-la-Vallée - Chessy station was opened. This last section was built primarily to provide transport to the newly created Disneyland Paris . In Marne-la-Vallée - Chessy you can change to the TGV network.

The route to Cergy and Poissy

In the 1960s, France, like many other European countries, experimented with alternative modes of transport. In France, the Aérotrain , a high-speed monorail hovercraft, was developed; initially with jet engine as drive, later with linear motor. It was intended to operate an express connection from La Défense without a stop to Cergy with an aerotrain. Because of the high construction costs - 600 million francs compared to 230 million francs for a conventional railway line with intermediate stops - and difficulties with the still young technology of the linear motor , the project was dropped in 1974.

The new connection uses a freight train connection from Archères before it branches off in Neuville on a newly built line to Cergy. Due to technical features - the branch to Cergy is not operated by RATP, like the rest of the line, but by SNCF - the line was opened to Cergy-Préfecture on March 29, 1979, but initially only with a regional train connection to Saint-Lazare. The route to Cergy has only been served by line A since 1988, and the short branch line to Poissy followed a year later. Two stations went into operation in Cergy: 1985 Cergy-Saint-Christophe, in 1994 today's terminus Cergy-Le Haut.

Relief measures

The SACEM control system allows an extremely tight train sequence. A train enters the Auber station while the previous train has not yet left the station.

The high travel speed in the city and the connection with the outer branches quickly led to a high level of acceptance of the connection, and the associated high occupancy exceeded all expectations of the RATP. In 1978, in the first year of operation of the new line, a total of 119 million passengers used the connection. Just a few years after opening, the line reached the limits of its capacity; the opening of the other RER lines ensured a further increase in the number of passengers on Line A. This subsequently influenced further planning for Métro and RER:

• In the 1980s , the high capacity utilization prompted the Paris public transport company RATP to develop a new control system for the German company Siemens to enable a shorter sequence of trains on a route. The so-called SACEM (Système Automatique de Contrôle, d'Entretien et de Maintenance) is still in use and allows trains to run on a section of the route with an interval of less than 90 seconds. On the central section of all branch lines under the center of Paris, it is not uncommon for a train to arrive at a station during rush hour while the previous train is still about to leave the station.
• If the course of line A was originally chosen to be parallel to metro line 1 in order to relieve this, line 1 was extended to La Défense in 1992 in order to relieve line A in turn. An extension of line 1 westwards to Nanterre is being considered, as is an eastern extension to Val de Fontenay , an important crossing station of the RER lines A and E.
• If the RER lines B and D share two tracks north of Châtelet Les Halles , new tunnels had to be built parallel to those of line A for the southern section of line D between Châtelet Les Halles and Gare de Lyon , which opened in 1995 , because the tracks Line A could no longer have taken trains from other lines.
• The route of Métro line 14, which opened in 1998, and the large distance between stations were chosen so that another fast parallel connection to line 1 and line A can be offered in the city center.
• The (planned) inner-city course of the youngest RER line E is intended to relieve line A; in the long term it is to take over the outer branch of line A to Poissy in the west of the city.

Despite all the measures taken to reduce the load, line A continued to show a very high load. If some passengers switched to the newly created parallel routes, the freed-up capacity was immediately used by new passengers or passengers who were avoiding them. When it came to the conclusion that further relief of the line by expanding the infrastructure would be practically impossible or simply too expensive (e.g. expanding the tunnel to four tracks), attempts were made to counteract the congestion in other ways; double-decker trains have also been used on the line since 1998.

Future and urgently needed improvements

Lots of delays on the route

The trains for the RER A are very late. The percentage of travelers who arrive at their destination station on time or with a maximum of five minutes' delay is measured. In 2010, the punctuality rates were mostly between 80 and 84% in most months. In the months of January, February, November and December even below 80%. Only in August (relatively low-traffic) was almost 90% achieved. In 2011 the numbers were slightly better: they were consistently above 80%. The lower limit of 87%, which is necessary so that the operators of the line do not have to pay a contractual penalty, was only exceeded in the vacation months of July and August.

In addition to many service improvements and renovation work, further optimizations are planned to cope with the heavy load on the line and to improve the punctuality of the trains. A master plan (Directeur de la Ligne A du RER scheme) for the RER A routes has been in progress since 2008 . The performance level should be improved in short, medium and long term improvements.

Renewal of ballast bed and tracks

On the trunk line, i.e. H. On the section between Nanterre-Université and Vincennes, the ballast bed and tracks will be renewed between 2015 and 2021: For this purpose, the line will be completely closed for around four weeks during the main holiday period and rail replacement services will be offered.

The program for 2015 saw e.g. For example, the following: On the Auber –La Défense section , RER traffic was interrupted from July 25th to August 23rd. The ballast bed, tracks and switches were renewed on a 4.3 km long stretch. Work was carried out in three shifts around the clock to renew more than 300 m of the roadway every day.

Improvement of the SACEM system

For example, the SACEM system is to be replaced by an improved system Nouveau système d'exploitation des trains by 2020 . Many stations on the outside lines are not yet equipped with the SACEM system. Especially on the route to Marne-la-Vallée, all train stations up to Noisy-Le-Grand - Mont d'Est are to be retrofitted with SACEM.

Pilotage automatique for the main line

The common trunk line of all lines - d. H. in the area from Val de Fontenay to Nanterre Préfecture is to be equipped with the semi-automatic pilotage automatique by 2019 . With a financial outlay of approx. 35 million euros, significant improvements in train operations are expected: The traveling speed of the trains on the main route would increase by up to 5 km / h and contribute to a higher punctuality of the trains. An additional train could also be run over the route per hour and direction of travel.

On April 27, 2017, the first automatically controlled train to be occupied by passengers ran on the main route. By the end of 2018, all RER A vehicles are to be technically equipped for automatic operation. The automation cuts the travel time between Vincennes and La Defénse by two minutes. Even in automatic operation, the trains remain manned by a driver who, among other things, controls the opening and closing of the doors.

Improved connection to Nanterre-Université

The branch to Cergy and Poissy leads on a viaduct directly past the Nanterre-Université station. In the future, this branch will also have platforms at the station.

A previously planned extension of the route from Cergy-Le Haut (aerial photographs can be seen to keep the route clear) via Vauréal and possibly further to Mantes-la-Jolie is currently no longer an option.

Train names

The line branch designations (A1-A5) noted in the line network map do not appear anywhere else. Instead, each train is marked with a train name consisting of a four-digit letter code.

The first letter of this combination indicates the destination station. The starting station of a train route is not recognizable. The second letter stands for the course of the line, i.e. H. at which stations is stopped. For better recognition, displays are also attached to each platform, which mark all the stations served with a luminous point. The remaining two letters should be a purely phonetic addition to make it easier to memorize the “name”. Two subsequent digits indicate the circulation, i.e. which train is in which direction of travel. Even numbers are revolutions towards the west, odd numbers towards the east.

Letter	Destination station	Examples of train names
B.	La Defense	BYLL, BORA, BTON
D.	Noisy-le-Grand - Mont d'Est	DYNO, DJIN, DOMI
N	Boissy-Saint-Léger	NELY, NAGA
O	Torcy	OKEY, ORKA, OFRE
Q	Marne-la-Vallée - Chessy	QUDO, QIKY, QBIK, QAHA
R.	La Varenne-Chennevières	RHIN, RUDI
T	Poissy	TERI, TJAC, TIKY
U	Cergy - Le Haut	UPAL, UDON, UXOL
W.	Train vide (empty run)
X	Le Vésinet - Le Pecq	XUTI, XOUD
Y	Rueil-Malmaison	YCAR, YVAN
Z	Saint-Germain-en-Laye	ZARA, ZEUS, ZINC

The "NELY" train, for example, goes to Boissy-St-Léger. The "UPAL" train, however, goes in the other direction to Cergy-Le-Haut.

particularities

• Line A, like line B, is partly operated by RATP. Only the branch to Cergy and Poissy in the west is operated by the SNCF. At the Nanterre-Préfecture station, both the train crew and the operating voltage will be changed on the affected trains, which necessitated the purchase of new trains.
• Line A does not have a single junction station with RER line C, although there is an intersection of both lines at Porte Maillot.

Vehicles of the RER A

An MI09 series train on the Nanterre Viaduct

On the RER A vehicles are of series MS 61 , MI84 , MI 2N and MI 09 are used. The trains of the MI09 series are gradually replacing the MI 84 trains. At the beginning of 2014, 60 new trains were in use.

In mid-January 2015, 83 MI09 trains and 43 MI2N trains were on the RER A routes. At this point it was decided to order 10 additional MI09 units. After delivery of all trains ordered by 2017, 140 MI09 trains and 43 MI2N trains are to be used.

literature

• Brian Patton: Paris RER Handbook. Capital Transport, Harrow Weald 2001, ISBN 1-85-414230-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ LCI.fr: RER A - "10 seconds de retard, 15,000 voyageurs affectés!" ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ STIF PowerPoint presentation from May 2012 (French; page 2), accessed on December 5, 2012
3. ↑ Mobilicités of July 3, 2015: Auber-La Défense: le RER A prend un mois de congés pour faire peau neuve (French), accessed on July 9, 2015
4. ↑ Le pilotage automatique dans le tronçon central du RER A STIF press release from March 2014 (French) accessed on October 3, 2014
5. ↑ Le RER A passe progressivement au pilotage automatique dans son tronçon central. (No longer available online.) RATP, archived from the original on May 17, 2017 ; accessed on May 12, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ LE RER A EN PILOTAGE AUTOMATIQUE: QU'EST-CE QUE ÇA CHANGE? In: RER A Blog. RATP, May 10, 2017, accessed May 12, 2017 . 
7. ↑ STIF communication (updated on September 26, 2014; French), accessed on October 2, 2014
8. ↑ STIF press release of February 11th (French) accessed on May 27th, 2015

Web links

Commons : RER A  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website with timetable
• Pictures of RER trains