Railways in France

[#Metro]

A thread about railways in France

[#Metro]

Paris Metro Map
https://www.ratp.fr/en/plan-metro

[Gazza]

A timely thread since I was in France a couple of weeks ago.

One of the places I visited was Rennes.
Convenient to Mont St Michel, I was also keen to visit because at the time of construction they were the smallest city in the world to have a metro.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennes_Metro

The 2nd line just opened in 2022.

The total system length is 23 km and they get 37 million passengers per year

Both lines are quite short, You can basically get from the city centre to a terminus in 10 mins, or from end to end in 20. But the city is compact, so the terminus is literally on the ring road and its farmland beyond.

(The park and ride at one end of line b was ENORMOUS
Cesson-Sévigné, Brittany
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.13212,-1.618554,3a,89.50702y,288.00046h,92.04299t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sFfgrZxTyVKJTOYkkLOiqZg!2e0 )

They used driverless rubber tyre type tech...in fact they seemed like glorified airport people movers.

Line b line had more spacious, but simpler rolling stock. Each carriage sat on 4 enormous tyres, a bit like one of those All terrain buses, and a single central guiderail steers it.

Line a was a bit more similar to other VAL trains seen in france, albeit quite narrow inside. The front had toy steering wheels for kids to pretend to drive the train.

On line a the stations are quite small and the fit out was cheap as chips, just basic white tiles everywhere. But imo not a problem, you only spend 5 mins in the station since frequency is so good (even on a Sunday morning when these pics were taken)

Line b had a bit more architectural merit, with a lot of perforated steel and some nice lighting.
The outer suburban shallow level stations had sunken gardens providing natural light and unique glass windows, giving the feeling of being in a garden even though you were a couple of stories below ground level.

The 2 lines basically run through all the high density and university campus areas of the city, and particularly on line b even snake around a bit to avoid low density areas and visit high density areas in preference.

Normally direct routing is preferred but I think when you are working underground it's less noticeable.

On a bus route with lots of turns, the bus has to slow down at each intersection which kills journey times.

On the other hand the turns are quite smooth in a tunnel, and I guess when the total trip still only takes 10 mins, adding an extra minute to service an area of dramatically higher density is worth it.

To their credit the lower density parts of the city outside the catchment of the metro still get a median busway with a large park and ride at the end.

So no matter where you are in the city, you still have at least a class B row available in close proximity.

237 Av. François Château
https://maps.app.goo.gl/AT3kqgXZJQ1HDPrC6

I reached Rennes via TGV.
Rennes has a population of 357,000, and conveniently both metro lines interchange Under the main station.

TGVs ran to Rennes hourly, and the service I caught had every seat taken. So if it can work in France to small cities like this, we can certainly have Proper high speed rail to cities of similar size such as Canberra and Newcastle.

[Gazza]

Some more pics.

[Gazza]

And like that, RM transit have done a video on Rennes
https://youtu.be/wgbskLXhk4Q?si=zPyP9QZvdgq9ir4n