Promises only bind those who receive them. Even when they are set in stone. Seven months before the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a little music is tinkling: will we be ready to transport the millions of visitors who will flock to attend the competitions? The question is far from trivial. For the organizers of Paris 2024, it is simply a question of respecting a promise made to the IOC when the candidacy file was submitted to the leaders of the world Olympism: 100% of spectators will have to access the competition sites by transport in common. Better yet: Tony Estanguet, president of the organizing committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojop), promised at the time free transport for all those who had tickets to attend the events. This last commitment already fell through last year.
There remains the transport offer. On November 23, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, launched the controversy: “There are two things for which we will not be ready, transport and sheltering homeless people,” declared -her, just to make people forget “Tahitigate” and her real fake professional trip to surf sites in Polynesia. A little sentence which immediately triggers the ire of the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, and the president of the Ile-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse.
A man, at the heart of the system, remains silent: Jean Castex. He was appointed just a year ago to head the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP). The former Prime Minister knows the Olympic file by heart. Before working at Matignon, from 2017 he was responsible for supervising the organization of the Olympic Games for the State as an interministerial delegate, before joining the presidency of the National Sports Agency a few months later. He knows the smallest subtleties of the promises made to the IOC at the time of the candidacy. Except that, between 2017 and today, the world has changed. Covid seriously slowed down the work; energy and construction prices have exploded. Of the four additional metro lines promised in the suburbs – the 15, the 16, the 17 and the 18 – when Jean Castex was interministerial delegate, none will be ready next summer. No Charles-de-Gaulle Express either: tourists who land at Roissy will have to pile into the old RER B. Only the extension of line 14 which should link Saint-Denis-Pleyel to Orly airport as well that that of the RER E towards the west of the capital – and again, the offer will be reduced due to a lack of trains delivered on time by Alstom – will be carried out on time. But what bothers you the most is that the existing transport offering is still not up to the task of the event.
Cuddle therapy and checkbook
However, when he was appointed head of the RATP, Castex had a mission: to calm the social climate, put oil in the wheels and make the buses and metros leave on time. He has his work cut out for him. In the fall of 2022, eighteen months of permanent strike undermined the bus network. 1 in 4 vehicles on average does not leave the depot. And then the unions are up in arms about the plan to open the bus network to competition, planned for early 2025. The “whatever it takes” Prime Minister has a strategy: cuddle therapy and checkbook.
Only one month of negotiation and, on January 6, 2023, he signed the peace of the brave with the bus drivers. In exchange for 120 hours of additional work per year, they will receive 370 euros gross per month in addition… And two months ahead of schedule, he tops the famous NAO with all the unions, with a 5% profit at stake. increase in 2023 – or 1,365 euros net per year on average –, accompanied by a review clause in July. He is finally launching a vast recruitment and training campaign for metro drivers: 400 new positions in 2023 alone.
The results ? A payroll which has increased by a little more than 10% this year and buses which are finally leaving the depots. The fact remains that, on the metro, after a slight improvement in the first half of 2023, regularity has deteriorated again since the fall. While previously two lines posed a problem, the 7 and the 13, there are now three more – the 3, the 6 and the 8 – where the service is provided at barely 85%, according to the scores of ‘Ile-de-France Mobilités, the public establishment, chaired by Valérie Pécresse, responsible for organizing transport in the region.
The reasons ? Endemic absenteeism. According to our information, nearly 200 metro drivers are missing every day, or a little more than 6% of the total. This is more than double the pre-Covid level. Added to this are maintenance problems and the increase in suspicious baggage. Since the start of the year, on line 6 alone, there have been nearly 200 packages detected compared to only 40 in 2019. Each time, traffic is interrupted to give specialized teams time to intervene.
Olympic “whatever it takes”
Cascading delays which look bad a few months before the Olympics, when we know that the RATP will have to transport nearly 12 million passengers per day this summer during the events, where, normally, during the slow months of July and August, the management only supports 7 to 8 million. We will therefore have to strengthen the offer compared to a normal summer on certain lines, mobilize drivers, encourage them to delay or shorten their holidays. According to calculations by Edgar Sée, deputy director for the Olympic and Paralympic Games at RATP, out of nearly 45,000 employees of the agency, 19,000 agents will be mobilized during the Olympics. How to do ? By putting butter in the spinach. Except that the RATP accounts are not in top form.
Last summer, faced with the increase in payroll and the swelling of his energy bill, Jean Castex presented his bill to Ile-de-France Mobilités. While the new boss of the management was counting on a profitable year in 2023, he then forecast a loss of 70 million euros. For the former Prime Minister, the region must still put in the effort, in particular to cover salary increases. And ensure that the accounts are in surplus at the end of 2023, so as to distribute profit-sharing at the start of 2024. A useful carrot at a time when he will have to negotiate with the unions attendance bonuses during the Olympics. The discussions with Valérie Pécresse are tough, but the president of Ile-de-France Mobilités opens her wallet: an additional 125 million euros to complete 2023, and nearly 160 million for 2024. To which are added nearly 53 million signed in an amendment at the end of September to finance the permanent hiring of 200 additional drivers for the Games.
Budgetary extensions welcome for Castex, but which are not supposed to cover attendance bonuses for drivers. This is where the State enters the dance, very discreetly with a decree (n° 2023-117), published in Official newspaper on November 30, detailing the creation of “Covid aid” for public carriers of almost 50 million euros in total. Except that the criteria for awarding this aid mean that only the RATP will benefit from it… It’s up to Castex to play now. After all, the Olympics are worth a form of Olympic “whatever it takes”.
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