[PRCo] France 1

Thu Mar 10 23:28:24 EST 2011

To prevent any more wild arguments like the recent one about light rail ... addresses have gone blind.  You want to contribute, tell me.  
INTRODUCTION TO FRANCE ... Great Place, Wonderful People

PREJUDICE IS ONE OF THE HARDEST OF MAN'S FAILINGS TO OVERCOME.   I'VE OFTEN HEARD IT SAID AND READ EDITORIALS THAT THE FRENCH ARE RUDE;  THAT THE FRENCH DON'T WANT TO SPEAK ENGLISH;   THAT THE FRENCH DON'T WANT TO FOLLOW US INTO WAR;  THAT THE FRENCH WAVE THE WHITE FLAG INSTEAD OF FIGHTING.  LET'S DISPENSE WITH THESE THOUGHTS IF WE CAN.   

Most tourists visit Paris and few go out into the provinces and therefore their impressions come from a big city.   What would our impressions of the USA be if the only place we visited was New York City?   Big cities are congested, busy, hurly burley.     The people who live in them always seem to have something on their mind other than waiting on the tourist.    We perceive that as rude and hostile.   New York City is one of those very busy places.   It has 2,000 people per square mile.   Paris has 3,500 people packed into each square mile.   However, when you get out into the provinces, the French are just as nice as the Americans in Butte or Grand Island or Johnstown or Asheville or Ripon.   

I can remember asking a New York policeman in 1990 if he could tell me what corresponding cross street corresponded to a certain building number because I was looking for a specific address on Sixth Avenue.   You see, in New York the building numbers bear no relation to the cross streets.  They're random.  I was pretty sure the officers carried wallet card to answer that question.   The officer's answer to me:  "How the f--- should I know!"  And we say the Parisians are rude?  

The French don't speak English.   I'm not too sympathetic to the people who say that considering that the European tourists who come to the United States have to learn English in order to spend dollars here.   I've found a lot more English speaking   French people than French speaking Americans.  Almost universally when I've wanted to buy dinner, or a hotel or a tank of gas or a pencil in France, even if I asked in French "Combien est-ce, s'il vous plait?" (How much is this, please?), I will often be answered in English.   Sadly, we don't return the favor when they come here.   But it does help to learn some of the basics of the French language if, like me, you prefer wandering around a nation on your own instead of using guided tours.   (A guided motor coach tour is how you find out which stores give the tour guides a kick back on the over-priced merchandise and how you also determine that the American in the bus seat in front of you needs a haircut but you really don't mingle with the Europeans.)   

That the French wave the white flag and want peace?   They lost 1.8 million people in the Napoleonic Wars, 1.7 million in World War I, and 206,000 in World War II ... that's about 10% of the nation's population today.  We lost 0.13% of our population in World War I, mostly because of disease, and 0.32 percent in World War II and we never had foreign combatants on our turf except in POW camps.   They understand the meaning of war; we think we do.   You really have to have people lopping bombs onto your own home or marching through your town before you truly understand.    Finally, the French have a larger Islamic population than almost (or probably) any other European nation which is probably a very good reason not to follow us into Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan.    

I have two favorite stories of French friendliness and none about animosity:

1)  My wife and I had just finished dinner one night in a rather unpretentious truck stop in the Loire [River] Valley in 1997.   I was paying the check and I heard my wife chattering away behind me.   I turned and looked.   Turns out the restaurant owner's wife had been a foreign exchange student in the USA and she was trading addresses with my wife.  While people pass through on tour buses, they don't get all that many independent travelers who use rental cars and stop in for dinner.  This restaurant owner was uncommonly open and friendly.   I might add I only had one bad meal in six months in France and that was my mistake for eating in a Chinese store-front restaurant in Paris where they cooked everything in the morning and nuked it the rest of the day to rewarm it ... the lack of customers should have been the tip off ... a case of warned and failed to react.

2)  In 2002 I was waiting at Gare du Nord in Paris for the Channel Tunnel train to London .   Some young "punk" dashed to the head of the queue and butted in line.  Every nation has those kids.   I forced myself to think calming thoughts, "All the seats are reserved.    He and I are going to get to London at the same time.   No big deal.   Don't get upset."   Then I noticed the lady in front of me had turned around and was studying my wearing apparel.   Europeans do that all the time.   They have become very adept at telling where somebody is from by the clothing they wear.   She spoke to me in English.   "Sir, I hope you will not judge my country by the attitude of that man.   We are not all that rude in France."   I stammered; thinking of something to say.   All I could think of was, "Merci.   If I thought the French were rude, this would not be my sixth or seventh vacation since 1960 in France."

Actually, the French are probably more like us than we would like to admit!

AND NOW TO THE SUBJECT MATTER...

MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS THIS WOULD BE EASY ... SOMETHING THAT WOULD TAKE ONE TRANSMISSION.   THEN I DUG INTO IT.   BEFORE THE RAILWAY RENAISSANCE THERE WERE STREETCARS IN MARSEILLES, LILLE AND ST. ETIENNE AND THE METRO IN PARIS.  ALL THE OTHER LINES HAD BEEN ABANDONED; MANY BECAUSE OF WAR DAMAGE.  WHEN I MADE MY LAST VISIT IN 2002 THERE WERE A COUPLE OF NEW LINES IN PARIS PLUS NEW LINES IN STRASBOURG, NANTES, ROUEN AND GRENOBLE.  ONCE I STARTED RESEARCHING THIS SUBJECT I FOUND THEY ARE OPENING LINES LIKE BULLETS COMING OUT OF A MACHINE GUN.   

I DO NOT GUARANTEE THE NUMBER OF CITIES WILL BE CORRECT WHEN I FINISH THIS IN A WEEK.  RIGHT NOW I COUNTED 21 CITIES EITHER RUNNING STREETCARS OR METRO LINES OR BUILDING THEM IN A NATION OF 66 MILLION PEOPLE ... THAT'S THE POPULATION OF CALIFORNIA, TEXAS AND IOWA GOING CRAZY RUNNING STREETCARS AND PEOPLE ARE RIDING THEM.  SO THIS WILL TAKE MORE THAN ONE INSTALLMENT.   I'M NOT EVEN SURE I HAVE EVERYTHING ON THE LIST!   THAT WOULD BE LIKE THE USA SUDDENLY GOING FROM 10 SYSTEMS IN THE 1965 TO 115 CITIES TODAY AND EXPECTING TO PUSH IT UP TO 150 IN ANOTHER FIVE YEARS!   THINK ABOUT THAT.   

Germany used to be the place to go but France is moving ahead!   But you will not find any heritage trams in France.   Heritage means 26 years old.   

We were last in England so let's hop on the Channel Tunnel train and head south....it's only a two hour ride under the English Channel to Paris.   And at nearly 200 miles per hour, I can tell you from experience, the ride is as smooth as sitting on your own living sofa.  

I can remember when you got up in the morning in London, had breakfast, then took the slow train to New Haven, tossed  the breakfast into the English Channel not once but twice (damn that was a rough ferry crossing), rode behind steam from Dieppe to Rouen to Paris and finally got into Paris in time to check into a hotel and have dinner.  Eurostar has shaved about five hours off the running time in those days!   It has created a new market: French with weekend homes in England and English with weekend retreats in France.   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yazdjabPxKY&feature=related

PARIS

BECAUSE ALMOST EVERYONE WHO GOES TO FRANCE GOES TO ITS CAPITAL, LETS START WITH PARIS, FRANCE FIRST.  

By the way, the French have a nasty habit (to us, anyway) of throwing away any consonants after the last vowel when they pronounce a word, so the s in Paris is silent.   Also most languages other than English pronounce the letter I (eye) like we pronounce a long E.  Therefore Paris, is Pah-re. 

PARIS HAS A HUGE METRO SYSTEM, A GROUP OF NEW LIGHT RAIL LINES AND A MASS OF COMMUTER RAILROAD ROUTES.  The city of Paris is home to 2.1 million people with over 10 million in the metropolitan area.   If you want to know what old is, read the Wikipedia article.  There has been a settlement there for over 6,000 years.  Paris had around 200,000 people when the Black Plague struck in 1348.  The monumental Cathedral of Notre Dame was begun in 1163 and finished in 1345 and your ancestors came to these shores when?  Four or five or six hundred years later?  

However, most people don't go there for trains.  It is one of those world class cities like London or Berlin where you just never seem to run out of things to see and do.  I never have.   So let's have a look at a few other things.  

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris 

My favorite contemporary travelogues are produced by Rick Steves and through an agreement with Oregon Public Television.   If you are in the United States, you can view these links to his Paris programs on Hulu.   Outside the USA, go to RickSteves Europe in your browser and you can find the same thing in youtube broken into several shows.   Beware ... these two are each 30 minute television shows but excellent.  Steves doesn't try to sell the most expense hotels; he tries to sell knowledge and understanding of people.   

      http://www.hulu.com/watch/90688/rick-steves-europe-highlights-of-paris-eiffel-and-monet-to-crème-brulée?c=Food-and-Leisure/Travel#s-p9-so-i0

       http://www.hulu.com/watch/99332/rick-steves-europe-paris-grand-and-intimate?c=Food-and-Leisure/Travel#s-p16-so-i0

NOW LE MÉTROPOLITAIN (UNDERGROUND RAIL) OR MÉTRO DE PARIS.   Contrary to popular belief, it is not a totally rubber-tired subway.   That seems to have been a belief that circulated when Montreal wanted a subway that was totally French.   Reality is different from they had us believe.   The Paris Metro is 70% steel rail (157 kilometers) and 30% rubber-tired (56.1 kilometers).  The steel rail portion of the system carries 77 percent of the riders and the rubber-tired lines carry only 23 percent of the passengers.   So much for myths.   The system total?   About 2.512 billion riders a year or perhaps 4.5 million riders on a weekday.   Compare it to the New York City Transit Authority which hauls between 7.5 and 8.0 million riders a day depending on the month.  (Double click on the map to fill the monitor, triple click to make it even bigger.)   

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Métro

In my three visits in the early 1960s, the old Sprague cars were still running in two colors, red for first class passengers and green for the peons.   To prevent jamming the doors and enforce civility, platform access gates would close as a train entered the station.  Well, today everyone is one class and they can jam the platforms just the same as every city.   There is, however, a museum train of Sprague cars.   Here is a great video of the museum train on line 12 at Volontaires station.    As Americans, put your self in the mood by thinking of riding an IRT Hi-V on a Broadway Local schedule or a 1907 PRT Market Street train out to 69th Street or a brown and orange Chicago Rapid Transit train in the subway.   For those of us who were there, this brings back memories.   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouRMontJwTo

And today's Paris Metro?    The second one shows some real artistic editing talent!  There are dozens of videos on line.   If you like, you can find more.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi6ywGRN7Y0&NR=1&feature=fvwp

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QkZ9m9rhwE&feature=related

The Paris RATP and SNCF (Societé National Chemis de Fer Français) operate extensive commuter services in metropolitan Paris.   The service today is electrified.   On my first visit I walked down trackside outside of Gare de l'Est in the morning rush hour and photographed a parade of steam commuter trains ... that was 51 years ago.   I guess as a 20-year-old I didn't care if I encountered the gendarmes.   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgSkFuatLdc&feature=related

Paris also has four light rail lines and these come close to meeting our definition, probably because we translated their words into English.   (Double click on the map to expand it so you can read it.)

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramways_in_Paris

The first light rail line is (Tramway 1) from Bobigny Hotel de Ville (Bobigny City Hall) to the St. Denis train station.   It opened in 1992 and was extended eleven years ago southeast to the Parisian suburb of Noisy-le-Sec.   An extension west to Asnières-sur-Seine and Gennevillers is scheduled to open in 2011 and a continuation to Nanterre is planned.  An eastward extension to Montreuli and eventually to Val de Fontenay RER station is planned.   Wikipedia gives conflicting passenger data ranging from 70,000 to 100,000 riders a day for this suburban circumferential line.   The current length is 11 km.  One other great reason for going up to St. Denis is to visit the royal basillica ... a very light and airy gothic structure where most of the French kings and queens were buried, most with and some without their heads.  

     T1 Light Rail:     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67JZ2wUOcI&playnext=1&list=PL160DE46F293D2FDE 

     The basilica at St. Denis:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys7w78MLr6U

The second Paris light rail line is (Tramway 2) extending13.7 kilometers from La Défense to Porte de Versailles southwest of Paris. It opened in 1997.   This largely uses a former SNCF route.  Wikipedia claims, "because of the success of this line (conflicting data -- 62,000 to 80,000 people use it daily) the trams were doubled in length in 2005, raising the capacity of each tram to 440 passengers.  An extension project is planned for completion in 2012, northward to Bezons.   The map shows a further extension north to Sartrouville under study (a l'etude).   These links show both the original equipment design and the rebuilt configuration.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRdIB7jl-gg&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExADHCMJsHs&feature=related

The Third Tramway line across the south Side of Paris from Pont du Garigliano to Port de Versailles (Garigliano Bridge to Versailles Gate).   This 7.9 km. line opened in 2006 and generates about 94,000 weekday riders.   A four station extension to the north side of the Seine River to Port de Charenton is scheduled to open this year.   Ultimately line three will be a horseshoe around the south, east and north sides of Paris.   The entire 22.4 km. line should be open in 2012.   Sounds like a great reason for a vacation!  

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Tramway_Line_3

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZAaFSFnSNU

A fourth tramway line, 7.9 kilometers long in the far northeast, operated by French National Railways, opened in 2006.   It runs from Bondy RER station to Aulnay-sous-Bois. 

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtYIFi5rxtU&feature=related  

   NANTES

The light rail movement or tramway renaissance in France began in the city of Nantes (pronounced Nat with a long a) in 1985.   It's a medium sized city of 283,000 in the Loire valley.  The single route has morphed into four routes that are effectively six because two actually cross the city.   Daily riding in 2007 was 266,000 or around 45,000 per trunk route.    Length of routes?   43.5 km or 27 miles.   If you want to compare it to US systems, that's 10,000 people route mile per day.    And more extensions are planned.    Notice that at ten minutes into the first video you see a shopping center ... that was on the first line to open.   It is in the north suburbs of Nantes.   

     http://www.eaue.de/winuwd/77.htm

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantes_Tramway

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtqp00F-IUI

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXyjOa6sIN4&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXyjOa6sIN4&feature=related 

GRENOBLE

Grenoble, in 1987, became the second city to reintroduce tramways to France.   Today it has a four line, 35 km network hauling 201,000 passengers a day.  Grenoble is a university and technical city in foothills of the alps in southeast France.   It only has a population of 126,000.   Did you get those numbers?  A total of 201,000 fares probably equals 100,00 people out of a population of 126,000?  The entire urban unit is about 428,000.  That's still one rider per day for every 4.2 people in the area.   What I don't know is whether or not they count the 60,000 university students where they go to school like we do.  You can get there in a couple of hours by TGV train service.   

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenoble

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenoble_Tramway

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqaPMTkWMA

An interesting sidelight on fare collection.   We've all seen the fare inspection officer enter a car by one door and fare evaders get up and leave through the other doors, right?   Well one day in Grenoble I witnessed uniformed ticket inspectors enter my train at every door.   Five of them.    It took all of 30 seconds until they had collared their first victim who didn't have a chance to escape.   I have a hunch that whatever fare evasion rate they published was honest.   

ROUEN

A line into a subway downtown with two-branches to the south of Rouen, one to Georges Braque and the other to Sotteville opened in 1992.   This was the third French city to reopen tram service.   Subsequently the Sotteville branch was extended to a terminal at Technopôle.  The 18 kilometer network had 65,000 daily riders in 2010.  Rouen (pronouced (R-wa) is on the left bank of Seine.   It is one of the smaller cities to have light rail ... the population is only about 105,000.   The Great Clock (le Gros Horloge) in Rouen is great for timing slide shows guys ... it goes back to 1409 when precise timekeeping wasn't important ... it has no minute hand.  Imagine a 602-year-old clock.  You will not find anything in WalMart that lasts that long! 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen_tramway

     The clock:       http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Rouen_gros_horloge_jnl.jpg

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FAUghKctDg&feature=related

STRASBOURG

Strasbourg, on the west bank of the Rhine River, was the fourth city to reintroduce trams.   The first two lines (A and D) were opened in 1994.   I was there the day they opened the second two.   It take real Hutzpah to open two routes during a county fair or state fair and that is precisely what they pulled off in September 2000 when they opened the B and C lines and they did it without a hitch in spite of crowds that filled every available car.   Those people knew what they were doing!   The E line opened in 2007, the F line in 2010.   The 56 kilometer system moves about 300,000 passengers a day according to the city's website.   Three more extensions are planned before 2015.

The trams were introduced to get the automobiles out of the city and reduce air pollution.  Parking and driving restrictions were then also introduced downtown.   Only in Europe would such a solution be consider acceptable.   What would happen if you told an American he couldn't bring his car to town?   The town would die.   The population of Strasbourg has grown from about 260,000 when they began to clamp down on autos and introduce light rail to 273,000 in 2006.   It's also a city that you should spend a day in just looking the sites like the cathedral, the museums, the old city wall. 

If you wish to go there, there is a car stop at the train station and an IBIS hotel at the station.  A friend of mine loves to claim that IBIS is French for cheap.   Actually IBIS is a middle range name for Accord hotels ... somewhat higher than Motel 6 which is their well know United States flagship brand.   If you have an automobile, I could recommend a great small town German family-owned hotel across the river in Kehl.  

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_tramway

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuFwIcbRo8I&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS_S8Q450Lo&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gckN2ANG_zc&feature=related

So ends the gospel according to Fred.   :<)   The next installment will be all those lines that have opened since I was last there seven years ago!   