Austerlitz is to train stations what the Sagrada Familia is to cathedrals: eternally unfinished. It is therefore a daring audience bet to dedicate an episode of “Parigo”, the show dedicated to mobility in the Ile-de-France region on France 3, to the least busy of the six major Parisian stations, with between 19 and 24 million passengers annually. . Unless we take into account that since 2021 it has hosted the Paris-Nice night train, that its glass roof inaugurated in 1867 is currently being restored, with the replacement of 10,000 glass plates one by one, and that the construction site has begun there. twenty years ago is scheduled to end in 2027. Finally! All told in less than a quarter of an hour flat.
For eight seasons, journalist Bertrand Lambert has played “Parigo” every week, with humor and pugnacity. All episodes broadcast since 2022 are available for seven years on the France.tv platform.
The themes covered are often of interest beyond Ile-de-France, such as “Clean buses for 2025? » At the depot of the busiest bus line in Europe, the Trans-Val-de-Marne, Bertrand Lambert assesses the reliability of vehicles running on biomethane (how long do they take to recharge? Is it really a clean fuel?). Before going to Versailles, where the few hydrogen buses used serve as a test for the entire sector.
Core target
Each episode follows the same framework: an introduction, a “look in the past”, reports on a construction site, in a train or during tests, meetings and an interview. Some may interest visitors, such as the history of “La gare Saint-Michel”, with a surprising return to the archives on the complex digging of metro line 4 under the Seine, or “Transporting the supporters”, an eternal subject, of the Rugby World Cup at the 2024 Olympic Games.
Among the subjects more national than “Parigots”, let us mention “Car obesity” and “Motorized two-wheelers: will paid parking become the norm? », which looks back on the origins of paid parking since 1971, the year the first parking meters were installed in Paris. “Yes, this will become the norm,” warns David Belliard, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of transport. This regular on “Parigo” is also present in “The great Parisian places are reinventing themselves”.
However, the show does not forget its core target. “New RER E: an extension to the West? » (up to La Défense) is characteristic. Funny in its staging, it is less so when it addresses the construction delays and the additional cost of 1.7 billion euros. Extremely rare, the SNCF also refused permission to film. But is there a job site that finishes on time? Definitely very strong, Bertrand Lambert found it, in “RER, tramway, metro: long-awaited extensions”.