On Friday, the 3rd of May, the Eole train line was inaugurated in the presence of the French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who was accompanied by the Minister for Transport Patrice Vergriete, Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, Valérie Pécresse, President of the Île-de-France Region and Île-de-France Mobilités, and the project teams.
Eole, an abbreviation for “Est-Ouest Liaison Express” (East-West Express Link), is an extension of the regional express network (RER) from Saint-Lazare station to Mantes-la-Jolie, via Nanterre, La Défense and Poissy. setec was involved in the project as lead of the project management consortium, with Egis Rail, the architectural firm Jean-Marie Duthilleul and AREP as subcontractors. The setec teams were responsible for the La Défence sector (station and adjacent tunnels), and for the railway equipment throughout the project (track, catenaries, etc).
As part of this extraordinary project, the teams were faced with major technical challenges at La Défense. They had to create an underground station measuring 250 metres long and 30 metres wide, at a depth of 40 metres, beneath the busiest business district in Europe, without disrupting daily commuters or commercial activity.
“The highlight of the project was of course the renovation of the existing buildings underneath the CNIT,” says Michel Pré, Expert Consultant at setec tpi, who supervised the studies and tenders for the La Défense team.
“We managed to carry out all the works at La Défense station without disrupting the commercial operation of the buildings above. It was a major challenge. We were able to draw on the company’s expertise, which was quite exceptional.”
” We worked with all types of support methods. The most memorable moment for me was when we laid the various levels of the CNIT on its new foundations. The levels had been sitting on micro-piles for months, while the CNIT continued to operate. No one could have imagined what was going on beneath their feet.” Jean Sousa, Project Director, setec tpi.
A true technical achievement rewarded in 2019 by the Grand Prix National de l’Ingénierie and nominated in 2023 as the world’s largest project by the International Tunnelling Association. One of the objectives behind the Engineers and Citizens project was to improve the quality of service for commuters in the Paris region, in particular by reducing congestion on the RER A and B lines during rush hour, and to support regional development.
Congratulations to all the teams involved in this mobility project for the entire Greater Paris region!
