Grand Paris Express: A Lifeline for Impoverished Neighbourhoods

Just days before the 2024 Summer Olympics, new metro stations opened in Paris. While the trains once helped athletes on their way to earn medals, they now primarily serve suburban residents. Named the Grand Paris Express, the network will expand in the coming years to cover 200 kilometers with 67 stations located outside central Paris.

Commuters in the greater Paris region spend an average of 68 minutes commuting to work—twice as long as residents in other regions of France. The main reason is the necessity to go via the city center. But the Grand Paris Express avoids central Paris altogether. Its orbital Line 15 could serve as inspiration for a similar ring route in Prague.

The metro is expected to offset the carbon footprint of 370,000 cars. But the project also has a clearly defined social mission: 42 stations are located close to various impoverished neighborhoods. In these areas, access to employment is crucial. Housing developments are planned near many stations, and in thirteen of these areas, over half of the housing units will be designated as affordable social housing.

City Hall on the Tracks

Until 2015, the center of Delft was divided by a two-kilometer-long viaduct from the 1960s. When the tracks were moved underground in 2015, a new glass building by the architecture studio Mecanoo was built above the entrance to the underground station. It combines passenger services with the city hall. If you arrive in Delft by train and set out to explore, the first thing to greet you is a massive historical map of the city displayed on the ceiling of the station lobby.

City employees work in the four floors of offices above the lobby. The building tapers off at the edges to blend in with the surrounding low-rise buildings, and its development in turn transformed the entire street running through the city centre—where there once were hundreds of columns and a concrete railway ramp, there is now a pedestrian-friendly avenue. Underground tunnels now serve more than 350 trains a day, and a canal has been added along the length of the new promenade.

A Tram Through the Heart of an Artificial Island

IJburg is a Vimex location—a result of an urban development strategy introduced by the Dutch government in 1991, to improve housing accessibility across the country. These new neighborhoods were built close to existing urban areas to make use of already established infrastructure. New residents support local businesses through their everyday shopping, while urban sprawl into undeveloped countryside—an increasingly rare commodity in the Netherlands—is avoided. Public investment in these areas is focused primarily on strengthening public transportation.

IJburg was built on six man-made islands. The first residents moved in in 2014, and over time, the district has grown to include 18,000 housing units, a large park, and even public beaches. A tram line known as the IJtram runs through the center of the islands, connecting the area to Amsterdam Central Station in just 20 minutes. With over 30,000 daily passengers, it’s the city’s busiest tram line, operating more than 15 trams per hour. For most of its route, the tram runs without having to cross other types of traffic.

Funding the Metro by Selling Municipal Land

Back in 2000, Ørestad was little more than a patch of municipal land. Today, it’s a district with high-quality public spaces, and the M1 metro line takes you there from central Copenhagen in just 15 minutes. The construction of the overground line—highly anticipated by residents of nearby neighborhoods—was financed by the city selling off parcels of land. Ørestad is often called Denmark’s biggest intersection: at the midpoint of the area, the metro line crosses over a railway that continues to the Øresund Bridge and into Malmö, Sweden.

The district is primarily an administrative hub. The target was to have 80,000 people working here. Offices are located right next to public transport stops. Plans also account for 20,000 students and an equal number of residents. Highlights include the concert hall designed by Jean Nouvel, as well as several buildings that break records—Denmark’s largest shopping mall and Scandinavia’s largest congress center and hotel.

Heritage Meets High-Speed Rail

The train station in Antwerp is a monumental building rich with decorative elements borrowed from various architectural styles. From the outside, it looks more like a luxury hotel, while the grand entrance hall is crowned by a dome inspired by the Roman Pantheon. Since 1905, it has stood as a symbol of the city’s wealth.

The station was originally designed as a terminus—meaning trains could not pass through, just like at Prague’s Masaryk Station. But a successful transformation in 2007 proved that even such a structure can be integrated into a high-speed rail network. Two tunnels were excavated beneath the city center, and new platforms were built beneath the original hall. Trains now stop in three different levels, with the original platforms mostly serving regional traffic. The reconstruction won the Europa Nostra Award for excellence in the restoration of cultural heritage.

Would you like to learn about the changes in rail transit that await Prague in the coming years? Come to CAMP for our exhibition Prague Tomorrow? Connected City.