On the road and on the rails, traffic was very disrupted on Thursday January 18 in Ile-de-France. The cause is the snow which settled this morning in the Ile-de-France landscape. According to Météo-France, 4 centimeters fell during the night of January 17 to 18 in the region.
Early this morning, several accidents had already been recorded, and numerous disruptions to public transport reported. Around 8 a.m., the SNCF Connect and Bonjour RATP applications crashed due to a saturation of connections, leaving thousands of Ile-de-France residents in the dark.
Especially since, if the snow has stopped falling, Météo-France warns: “The end of the precipitation will not [signifie] not necessarily the end of slippery conditions.” The Ile-de-France region is still among the 25 departments placed on orange snow-ice alert. L’Express takes stock of the situation.
Only 1 in 4 buses run
While no Ile-de-France bus was running at 6 a.m., several lines gradually resumed service. However, traffic remains very disrupted on the Greater Versailles bus network, where certain lines are currently not served.
Many lines are also still at a standstill in the Saint-Germain Boucles de Seine sector. Around 9 a.m. this morning, express lines 1, 10 and 21 gradually resumed service. Back to Essonne, where traffic remains very disrupted on the Paris-Saclay or Essonne South-West networks.
“The service of the interrupted bus lines will resume as the roads clear the lanes blocked by snow,” an RATP spokesperson told AFP, without being able to give a certain time of resumption. “It will depend on the roads.”
In addition, school transport is not provided this Thursday. On Wednesday January 17, the mayor of Parmain, for example, suspended school bus services in his town of Val-d’Oise. Seine-et-Marne and Yvelines followed suit this morning.
Traffic disrupted on lines C, D, and E of the RER
If RER A and B seem to have been spared, traffic is “disrupted” on lines D and E, according to RATP. Traffic on several “important” sections of the RER C was also interrupted. As well as on the N and U lines of the Transilien.
Several road accidents
“Traffic conditions could be tricky in these areas,” warned Bison futé on Wednesday evening, calling for “caution”, as freezing rain could “lead locally to very rapid formation of black ice”.
Early this morning, several accidents had already been recorded, notably on the A6, the A104 and the D506. Unsurprisingly, traffic is slow on many routes. Among which the N118, in Yvelines, notably on the Vélizy side towards Paris. In addition, several sections of national roads and highways are closed. This is the case on the A1, the A115, the N14, the N184, and even the N104.
However, despite these few disruptions linked to snowfall, traffic remains relatively fluid this morning. The Sytadin barometer recorded 215 kilometers of cumulative traffic jams in Ile-de-France shortly after 8:30 a.m., i.e. “usual” traffic for this time.
Same story from the spokesperson for Vinci Autoroutes, Nicolas Guillaume, who assured our colleagues at BFMTV that the “roadways remain[aient] passable” on the Ile-de-France roads. “Currently, there are few difficulties on the Vinci Autoroutes Ile-de-France network. We don’t even have any, since our snow removal machines are patrolling,” he added.