Fans of Bruce Springsteen will remember it. While tens of thousands of them flocked to the Pierre-Mauroy stadium on Saturday to attend the concert of the American legend, the Lille metro broke down. The two lines have successively fell into the harbor.
The problems started around 12:30 pm with “a silent oar on line 1, which did not answer” and had to be towed to the terminus, explains the communication from Ilévia, the operator of the public transport network of the European Metropolis of Lille (MEL).
Buses mobilized to replace
The traffic was able to resume briefly, before being interrupted again on the same line due to a door closure problem. He only resumed around 11:15 p.m., according to Ilévia. At the same time, line 2 was immobilized between 10:30 pm and midnight “for a tire problem”.
Forty buses, 12 of which had been prepared in advance for the Bruce Springsteen concert, were mobilized to replace.
On social networks, the spectators shared their dissatisfaction with these recurring problems. “Release of the Boss concert. No metro line 1 in Lille. Closed. 50,000 people including many foreigners on foot or replacement buses. Bravo, “wrote Lille lawyer Frank Berton on X. Other users describe a” obstacle course “, the” galley “before and after the concert.
Already mid-May, traffic had been interrupted on line 1 for more than forty-eight hours, a record, due to a computer problem affecting the automatic driver. 12.5 kilometers long, this line is the oldest driver -free metro line in the world, inaugurated in 1983.
Doubling the length of the oars in 2026
The Lille metro is regularly affected by breakdowns in recent months. The MEL has planned to donate 4 million euros to users in the coming weeks due to dysfunctions suffered at the end of 2024. These disturbances are notably due to the deployment of the new automatic driver of line 1, which must be accompanied in 2026 in the doubling of the length of the lines of the line.
The MEL retained in 2012 Alstom for this project at 266 million euros, whose delivery was initially scheduled in 2016. The delays in the project led to several disputes between the MEL and Alstom. The community and the group, however, signed in January a new contract of 210 million euros for 15 additional trains.