SNCF claims it wasn’t alerted to the congestion caused by the large number of supporters from RER D, which it runs, at the Stade de France gates just before the Champions League final.
“We have not had any alerts on the topic ‘there are issues, we aren’t longer absorbing’, so hold RER D,” Sylvie Charles (director of Transilien, the SNCF branch in charge of trains departing from Paris suburbs) stated during a hearing before Senate dedicated to the mess of crowd management close to the stadium. She noted that the services transmitted every half an hour to organizers the number counted at the stadium’s exit from the RER stations on lines B or D.
The SNCF accounted for 37,000 people, which is “more than three-times what we normally have” on RER D. On the RER B, 6,200 was “a third of our usual have”. Due to a strike by RATP agents, traffic on the RER B was disrupted. Many supporters reported on line D. The filtering devices at the stadium were also overwhelmed.
Philippe Martin, RATP’s Deputy Director General, noted that the May 24 meeting with organizers and authorities “clearly specified [and] clearly indicated that flow from line B to D was going to be postponed”.
“There was an AFP message on May 26 that clearly indicated that the RATP invites travelers line D as a priority”, he said, adding that a “situation update” had been given to the French Football Federation on May 27th, the day before the match.
Philippe Martin said that he was also surprised by the statements made by the French Football Federation. Erwan Le Prevost (its director of institutional affairs) had actually denounced the insufficient information from RATP during a hearing in the Senate on June 9.
“If we had been able to get real-time information about the diversion flows from RER B and RER D, we would have been able to redesign our system in the morning.” He said that the prefecture did not have this information.
Representatives of the RATP, SNCF and SNCF stated that they were competent at their stations and that there was no major incident in their vicinity despite high attendance. Sylvie Charles reported that there was a fight at Saint-Denis as well as a stampede starting in La Plaine-Saint-Denis. There were also pickpockets.
