"We have to be patient," said a resigned RER B passenger to his fellow passengers. Like other regular commuters on the line, the private security employee, who got up at around 5 am on Saturday, August 12, had to replan his journey and take the RER D to Paris-Gare du Nord, get off at Stade-de-France-Saint-Denis station, further north, and board a replacement bus before finally reaching Aulnay-sous-Bois, in the northeastern Paris suburbs. "There are too many connections, we're tired, but even if we shout our anger, it won't change anything," he said.

The northern section of Europe's second-busiest rail line is exceptionally closed for three days, including a rare weekday on Monday, August 14. No trains will be running from Gare du Nord, which serves both local and international rail lines. France's national state-owned railway company the SNCF is modernizing the tracks and preparing for the arrival of new metro lines.

While such construction work is commonplace in the Paris region network these days – both because new lines need to be connected, but also because decades of under-investment in the transport system need to be put right – this particular construction is on a line unlike any other. The RER B serves the airport and is heavily used by frontline workers, those whose jobs are the most arduous and the least recognized. Even with the public holiday on August 15 making it a long weekend, 200,000 people are expected to travel on Monday.

Commuters guided by megaphone

To compensate for the lack of trains, a special operation has been put in place. Six hundred additional buses and coaches have been mobilized, as have 1,000 drivers, some of whom have been recalled from their vacations. Some streets were blocked off to set up temporary bus stations. An armada of transport staff and baggage handlers, some on temporary contracts, were recruited to assist passengers. Staff numbers will be at their peak on Monday, a day that remains a big unknown for the SNCF.

The transport operators, like the transport regulatory authority Ile-de-France Mobilités, don't know whether appeals that were launched six months ago to avoid travel on that day have been heeded. Substitution services will only be able carry 100,000 people. have been heeded. And yet, with the Paris 2024 Olympic Games just a year away, when as many people will have to be moved around in the middle of summer as on a working day in the middle of winter throughout Ile-de-France, but over a smaller area, the authorities know they are being closely watched.

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