A Week That Tested My Patience
I find the public transport system in France to be generally efficient, especially the railway system. That is, unless unexpected events occur — concrete falling onto the railway tracks, or the signalling system malfunctioning. And of course, there are sometimes acts of God. If your stars don’t align, a national railway strike joins the mix. Then, like mine, your train rides to Paris go off the rails.
I have found a freelance position teaching English in France. This is the week I have to attend training in Paris before I can start teaching. Unfortunately, this is also the week when heavy downpours hit France. Heavy flooding struck the past two days. As a result, the French government has just declared the region around Paris a natural catastrophe area. On top of that, the open-ended national train strike starts.
I live in a small city, 20km southwest of Paris. A typical train ride for me to get to the training office takes about 80min — already very long. It involves a RER train ride, on the railway network that serves central Paris and the surrounding regions. Then, I switch to 2 metro trains, on the network that serves central Paris only.
Fallen Concrete on Railway Tracks
On Tuesday morning, concrete from a bridge near a station en route fell onto the railway tracks. As a result, it disrupted the RER B train I was on. The tracks thus stayed unusable, and all passengers had to find alternate ways to get to their final destinations. Just as I struggled to find a bus to Paris, the train authorities came to the rescue. They arranged bus shuttles to take the stranded passengers to the nearest metro station.
Traffic Jam
Despite the efficiency of the train authorities, my whole journey still took 3h. Early-morning peak-hour traffic caused part of the delay. On top of that, incessant rain — falling since the past weekend — had left the roads clogged. As a result, the bus crawled for a distance of less than 10km to reach the nearest metro station. To top off my misadventure for the day, a malfunctioning signalling system then slowed down my metro rides too.
National Train Strike
Then, there is today, Thursday. CGT, one of France’s more powerful trade unions, backed the national train strike, which started on Tuesday night. The strike kickstarted with the RER on Tuesday night; the metro followed today. The strike barely disrupted traffic yesterday — it affected only 1 out of every 5 scheduled RER B trains. Today, the metro strikes added to the delay — I needed an additional 30min for each trip. The week has not ended yet. One more day to go.