2023-12-23 05:40:01
Soon, Amiens will only be one hour from the Roissy hub and Charles de Gaulle airport, compared to 1 hour 40 minutes. Thanks to the work, it will be possible to connect Lyon, Marseille and Strasbourg by TGV directly from Amiens station.
The work has been awaited for more than 30 years… and it will finally begin! Once renovated, a small portion of rails which extends over 6.5 km called the Creil-Roissy bar, will allow TGVs to access Amiens and Creil stations.
This means that the main lines coming from Lyon, Marseille or Strasbourg will directly serve the city center. It will therefore no longer be necessary to go through Paris or the TGV Haute Picardie station, located half an hour from Amiens.
The mayor of Amiens, Brigitte Fouré, notes that this project is “in the works for 30 years, so that it finally comes to fruition is extremely important”. After Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve “who was committed, it was the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron who confirmed his commitment on the subject”.
What does this mean in practice? “That means that we will be on the TGV city network and that is extremely important in terms of economic attractiveness for our city, for its entire employment area.” Beyond Amiens, it is also “important that we can be connected to the Roissy hub because we have a certain number of residents of our city who work in Roissy”. Today, they have to take the car to get there.
The arrival of the TGV is a “additional advantage because our city is economically attractive. We have had rather good news for several years now”.
Even if we won’t actually be able to take a TGV every half hour from Amiens, being on the TGV city network places us and makes us attractive on a global scale.
Brigitte Fouré, mayor of Amiens
Ultimately, this work allows, in the eyes of Brigitte Fouréto “make up for what I call an error, which occurred when we created the Paris-London TGV line, which did not pass through Amiens”.
When the TGV line between Paris and London was created, “it should have gone through Amiens, recalls the councilor. Because when we take a map and draw a line between Paris and London, it goes through Amiens, but at the time, for reasons beyond our control , the choice was made to put the TGV line along the A1 motorway and therefore halfway between Amiens and Saint-Quentin..
On the other hand, the work took so long to begin because “SNCF is a heavy liner, and sometimes these are projects over very limited distances with extremely reasonable amounts which take much more time than much heavier infrastructure”.
Brigitte Fouré does not mince her words: “sometimes, we can also have brakes put in place or a lack of good will. I’m not talking about the State, I’m talking about a lack of will on the part of the SNCF”.
As for Creil town hall, Jean-Claude Villemain is also delighted with the news. “It’s not a change, it’s an improvement in their means of transport to go to work but also for leisure and travel. It will completely change their lives”.
For now, “you have to take the car, 5,000 people make the trip, the shuttle, every day to go to work on the Roissy site, which is the second largest employment center after Paris in the Creillois basin”. He highlights constraints because “you have to take the highway, it’s expensive, it’s dangerous with road accidents, there’s the carbon footprint”.
But from the establishment of the Creil-Roissy link, travelers will be able to “settle in quietly and be transported in 22 minutes” to Roissy, and in 44 minutes from Amiens.
This connection will also help economic development. “The TGV is important because it will make communications between Creil, Amiens and the rest of the regional capitals of our country, with the international, faster.”. Goodbye also to “ruptures de charge”or connections, in Paris: “directly, a business manager will do Lyon-Creil, Lyon-Amiens without changing cars, that’s a plus”.
Jean-Claude Villemain recalls that he, the elected officials of the Creillois basin but also those of the Somme, fought for the project to succeed. “We fought, we obtained it. We have been campaigning for this bar for about twenty years now. Even recently, I sent a certain number of letters, we distributed leaflets “. Indeed, the project remained uncertain because the European Union “refused to pay the 80 million euros that we could obtain”.
Several entities are financing this project. “There is a center of financiers, there is the State and the SNCF. There is normally Europe to the tune of 80 million euros, the Hauts-de-France Region” et “7 to 8 intermunicipalities, including that of Creil”. For the latter, the funding amounts to “6 or 7 million euros that we will have to find”.
The mayor, however, regrets learning about the start of the work through the press. “We didn’t even have a meeting of the financing center to tell us the timetable”. He therefore asks “the explanations” and the “calendar” required “because we are going to finance”.
It is treating us unfairly not to give us this information and to hold a press conference to say that it is going to start. It’s saying: “we need your money but the work, leave it to us”.
Jean-Claude Villemain, mayor of Creil
At Amiens station, travelers are delighted to learn that their city will soon be served by the TGV. Axel, who often comes from Lyon, will no longer have to stop at the TGV Haute Picardie station. “It will be much simpler because we have to drive half an hour to take the highway and come to Amiens. And at least it would be a direct line, it will be much simpler to earn money. time”he rejoices.
Élodie, for her part, doesn’t always take the line “but frequently enough to be able to enjoy a Paris-Amiens TGV”. With current traffic, “there may be delays, overloads of passengers, no seats, knowing that I don’t take it often, so when I do take it, there may be problems”.
For Sophie, who regularly takes the train to the south of France, via Paris, to visit her family and friends, a TGV would allow her “to obviously save time, not to go through Paris where sometimes we lose about an hour, an hour and a half”.
In Creil too, the news is well received. A resident suggests that “the Creillois basin needs to develop and be open to its environment and to commercial areas large enough to reduce unemployment”. He concludes : “There are people who work in Roissy every day, others in Ile-de-France, so rebuilding an artery can only bring life to the Creillois basin”.
With Clara Delcroix / FTV
1703335085
#Work #TGV #Amiens #Creil #stations #connected #main #lines