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GARE DU NORD

Paris: Train and RER services at Gare du Nord hit by severe delays

An incident involving a person being hit by a train earlier on Tuesday morning has led to severe delays on train services at Gare du Nord in Paris.

Published: 11 July 2017 09:34 CEST
Paris: Train and RER services at Gare du Nord hit by severe delays
Photo: AFP

Passengers and commuters travelling through Gare du Nord on Tuesday faced major delays after an accident that saw a person hit by a train earlier in the morning.

Services including the Eurostar and Thalys, all main lines plus the RER B which heads to Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were suffering delays, according to reports.

According to French rail chiefs SNCF a person was hit by a TER train at around 6am on Tuesday morning, which led to all services being halted for over an hour as police and emergency medical teams attended the victim.

While train services were back up and running again just after 7am, passengers were warned they would still face delays throughout the morning.

 

To make matters worse for passengers, there were also reports of the station being evacuated after a suspect package was found.

 

 

 

TRAVEL NEWS

Swedish government shelves plans for two fast train links

Sweden's government has called for a halt to planning to faster train links between Gothenburg and Borås and Jönköping and Hässleholm, in a move local politicians have called "a catastrophe".

Published: 23 December 2022 15:53 CET
Swedish government shelves plans for two fast train links

In an announcement slipped out just before Christmas Eve, the government said it had instructed the Swedish Transport Administration to stop all planning for the Borås to Gothenburg link, stop the ongoing work on linking Hässleholm and Lund. 

“The government wants investments made in the railway system to first and foremost make it easier for commuting and cargo traffic, because that promotes jobs and growth,” infrastructure minister Andreas Carlson said in a press release. “Our approach is for all investments in the railways that are made to be more cost effective than if the original plan for new trunk lines was followed.” 

Ulf Olsson, the Social Democrat mayor in Borås, told the TT newswire that the decision was “a catastrophe”. 

“We already have Sweden’s slowest railway, so it’s totally unrealistic to try to build on the existing railway,” he said. We are Sweden’s third biggest commuting region and have no functioning rail system, and to release this the day before Christmas Eve is pretty symptomatic.”

Per Tryding, the deputy chief executive for the Southern Sweden Chamber of Commerce, complained that the decision meant Skåne, Sweden’s most southerly county, would now have no major rail infrastructure projects. 

“Now the only big investment in Skåne which was in the plan is disappearing, and Skåne already lay far behind Gothenburg and Stockholm,” he said.

“This is going to cause real problems and one thing that is certain that it’s going to take a very long time, whatever they eventually decide. It’s extremely strange to want to first suspend everything and then do an analysis instead of doing it the other way around.”  

The government’s instructions to the transport agency will also mean that there will be no further planning on the so-called central parts of the new planned trunk lines, between Linköping and Borås and Hässleholm and Jönköping. 

Carlson said that the government was prioritising “the existing rail network, better road standards, and a build-out of charging infrastructure”.

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