Eleven years after Nicolas Sarkozy 's founding speech on the development of the Grand Paris, negative signals are piling up for the Parisian super-metro project, the backbone of what is being billed as "the project of the century". This week's press conference by Thierry Dallard, the new Chairman of the Board of Société du Grand Paris, crystallized many of them.
Asked about the timetable for commissioning the first lines of the Grand Paris Express, the successor to Philippe Yvin and Etienne Guyot admitted that "we'll need a little more time to fine-tune things. More than six months after Édouard Philippe reframed the commissioning schedule, further delays are to be feared. Yet again. What's worse, with statements like these, we're literally plunging into the unknown. So much so, in fact, that one might even question the technical choice of developing a subway metro!
These uncertainties don't seem to be slowing Société du Grand Paris down in its appeals for funding. Like Gargantua, the Grand Paris Express seems to be an ogre that swallows billions of euros without ever being satiated. In the absence of precise figures - the budget has already doubled in a decade - SGP is drawing credit line after credit line, waiting for a further boost from the French government. According to Gilles Carrez's report, this can only be achieved by increasing taxes, starting with the tax on office space and the special equipment tax.
The situation may seem surreal given the stakes involved in making the Grand Paris project a reality. Behind the problems of the tunnel boring machines lies the question of the capital region's attractiveness at a time when all European metropolises are engaging in post-Brexit competition. How can we attract new businesses without ensuring a certain quality of infrastructure? How can we get private investors on board without a clear roadmap and, above all, a time horizon? How can we keep them in the engine without a minimum of credibility for the public word in implementing a strategy that has finally been decided?
The time for reports is over. The time for grandstanding, with everyone waxing lyrical about French genius in the hope of grabbing a slice of the cake, must come to an end. It's time for action. France is a nation of engineers. It has always known how to build bridges and dig tunnels. It's capable of rolling up its sleeves. It just needs to find a site manager.