Paris 2024 Olympics revive dream of 'river metro' along the Seine (2024)

Sitting on a bench, trying, in vain, to shelter from the stinging wind that swept across the La Guêpe-Buissonnière bridge, Florence freely shared her first name. The spring rains hadn't deterred this resident of the northern Paris suburb of La Frette-sur-Seine from taking part in an "Olympic cruise," the tickets for which were being sold at €12 by Seine-Saint-Denis Tourisme, the department's tourism development agency. "This trip allowed me to discover the Saint-Denis canal and the Stade de France," she said, delighted, as the barge she was on offered glimpses of the corrugated roof of the neighboring Olympic Aquatics Center, inaugurated at the beginning of April.

Despite the rain, all 110 places on the boat were booked out on that Saturday morning in March. In the afternoon, another route takes passengers around the island town of L'Ile-Saint-Denis, which hosts part of the Olympic and Paralympic Games venues, via the Seine river. In front of the Grande Nef Lucien-Belloni, a building shaped like a horse-riding saddle that will serve as a training site for several Olympic disciplines, and the pastel-hued buildings of the athletes' village, passengers crowded the decks, whipping out their phones to take photos of everything.

Water travel is a big hit. On the Seine, no fewer than 58 boat tour companies, including the famous Compagnie des Bateaux-Mouches, received almost 10 million passengers in 2023. Hotel boats, river liners and cargo-laden barges round out the armada that passes beneath the bridges of Paris every day.

This trend could be reinforced by the Olympic Games. On July 26, some 200 boats are due to cruise down the river for the opening ceremony. In the days that follow, several competitions will take place on the river. "This will give people the desire to take a trip down the Seine," said Stéphane Raison, president of the board of Haropa Port, the public institution that brings together the ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris.

Voguéo's aborted experiment

Yet, beyond the tourist tours, could boat connections be integrated into Paris' public transport system? After all, the various ports in the harbors of Lorient (north-western France) and Toulon (south-east) have a maritime service; while in the western city of Nantes, three regular shuttles connect the banks of the Loire and those of its tributary, the Erdre. In the western coastal city of La Rochelle, two boat lines, equipped with electric boats, take people across the port.

In the Paris region, riverboat enthusiasts have been nostalgic for Voguéo, an experiment which, from 2008 to 2011, offered a 35-minute connection between Paris (at the Gare d'Austerlitz train station) and Maisons-Alfort (a south-eastern suburb). The service was due to be extended westward in 2013, but the STIF regional transport authority (the forerunner of the current authority, Ile-de-France Mobilités, IDFM), decided against it for cost reasons. Today, Paris has to make do with the Batobus, which, for €23 a day, connects several piers located at the foot of the city's main monuments. Despite a €5 discount for Navigo transport pass holders, the concept mainly appeals to tourists.

This is because geography sets the rules: Given the time it takes to pass through a lock (around 10 minutes), regular passenger transport only makes sense within the same stretch between two locks; such as the 30-kilometer-long Paris level, which runs between the dams at Port à l'Anglais, to Paris' south-east, and Suresnes, in the west. In addition, in order to limit the impact of small waves caused by the movements of boats, which can damage the riverbanks over time, boat speed is limited to 12 km/h in the capital, 18 km/h in the suburbs, and only 6 km/h on the Ourcq and Saint-Denis canals, which are owned by the City of Paris.

Additionally, river navigation is slowed down during flooding, and boat stops must be easily accessible, and preferably close to bridges, to serve passengers on the other side of the river. A line that stops on one bank on the first leg of the trip, and on the other when coming back, as is the case with Batobus, is hard to understand. For all these reasons, river journeys are not always faster than going by bus, metro or RER regional trains. As an example, the shuttle service to the north of the capital called for by the Socialist mayor of Saint-Ouen (a north-eastern Paris suburb), Karim Bouamrane, connecting his town to the La Défense business district, which is upstream on the Seine, "doesn't seem economically profitable," said IDFM, which put forward a technical obstacle: "It's materially difficult to create a pier close to a metro station."

'Traffic could increase sixfold'

Rivercat, a cooperative society comprising "experts in river and maritime navigation," had hoped to launch several regular transport lines on the Seine and Marne rivers before the Olympic Games. The main service would have linked Maisons-Alfort to Issy-les-Moulineaux (a western suburb) via the center, "an hour and a quarter in full comfort, compared with an hour by RER with one or two changes," said Dany Carvalho, Rivercat's president and director general. "The shuttles could carry 100 passengers and 40 bicycles," he said.

Yet this ambition is hampered by the absence of an agreement with Haropa Port on the use of the piers. Rivercat wants the public institution to give it permission to dock its boats. "It's not up to respondents to set the conditions for a call for projects," said Raison. Relations between Haropa Port and Rivercat have even soured since the dispute was brought before an administrative court. However, the two entities have agreed on one point: For Carvalho, "there is room for new operators." Raison agreed: "Traffic could increase sixfold."

In spite of this, the most advanced regular boat transport project does not concern the Seine, but the Ourcq canal. One of the lots defined by IDFM as part of the competitivetendering process for the Ile-de-France bus network, which is due to start after the Olympic Games, includes "a link between Paris and Bondy," to the north-east of the capital. This river service, to be set up by the transport company that wins the tender, nevertheless depends on the maximum speed being increased to 10 km/h. "We're waiting to hear back from the City of Paris and Voies Navigables de France," the national waterway navigation authority, said IDFM.

In the meantime, the Seine transports goods, not only to Paris and its suburbs but also across the entire region, as grain growers in the east demonstrated in January, when they were worried about not being able to export their crops via the port of Le Havre. This year, the harvest period at the end of July coincided with the security period for the opening ceremony, a week during which the passage of even the smallest boat is strictly forbidden. After someone in an office naïvely asked if we could postpone the harvest, an agreement was eventually reached said Raison. Around 100,000 tonnes of wheat will be stored until the way is clear for passage again.

However, does the river only have a utilitarian vocation? "There's no narrative about the Seine, other than that based on its attractiveness, and its industrial and commercial use," said Vianney Delourme, president and co-founder of Enlarge Your Paris, an online media and events agency that aims to "explore Greater Paris." Yet over and above the trips that take place on the water, the river is a connection between the territories it crosses, offering "a thousand landscapes throughout the region, and as many incentives to walk or cycle along it, which is possible almost everywhere," said Delourme. The media hype surrounding the promises made by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and by the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, to swim in the seine, is nothing compared to "the main issue, which is to clean up the river and preserve its ecosystem."

Eric Sapin, head of the Alternat association, which organizes educational cruises for schoolchildren in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and occasional trips across the Paris region, from southern Juvisy-sur-Orge to Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the west, cruising for 12 hours and passing through five locks, also has the ambition of "making the Seine a popular place to wander." In May 2023, during one of the most recent editions of this expedition, the barge was fully booked.