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Article Dans Une Revue Géotransports Année : 2022

The City Booster railway station : a phantom model for French metropolises ?

La gare City Booster : un modèle fantôme au service des métropoles françaises ?

Résumé

This article proposes to examine the characteristics and possible application throughout France of a new French metropolitan railway station model developed by the SNCF group based on the open station model of the early 20th century, named by P. Ropert (Director General of SNCF Gares & Connexions from 2014 to 2019) in 2017 "City Booster". This model, whose reference station is the Parisian station Paris Saint-Lazare, is based on the objective and analysis that the station is now a public space where the city has entered (Joseph, 1999), and which must be connected to the territory at different levels: national through the rail network, regional in its role as a major connector, and metropolitan in the services it offers to the city and its neighbourhood. This work is based on an analysis of all French metropolitan stations in order to study the application of this model in French cities with very different characteristics. We have chosen to study 30 metropolitan stations located in 15 metropolises with different characteristics selected from three equal groups of metropolises: metropolises with more than one million inhabitants, metropolises with 500,000 to 1,000,000 inhabitants, and metropolises with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. This approach, based on the diversity of the metropolitan fact, makes it possible to question the metropolitan dimension of the City Booster, which is presented as an essential urban tool for metropolisation. Based on a Parisian station model, the question that arises is the capacity of this model to meet the expectations of all French metropolises. The other side of this question is whether it is possible to develop this model in all stations, even though it was initially designed to meet the need for economic equilibrium in the railway model. The results presented in this article are clear. The City Booster station has little territorial reality, being limited to five Parisian stations. It has therefore not "emerged" from the cradle where it was born: even though it is part of the logic of metropolisation, its real objectives are purely economic and mainly centred on the financing needs of the SNCF's rail activity. The very basis of this economic model, which is based on flows, does not seem to allow for its implementation, especially in a context where saturation is becoming a major issue for these major urban connectors. Far from being a new stage in the evolution of the open station, the City Booster station closes on different levels. The first is the functional level, with the reappearance of secure controls on possession of a ticket for access to platforms and trains, but also with the specialisation of services around consumer shops, taking little account of urban issues other than economic ones. The second is a social closure: the overwhelming presence of franchised shops, and the progressive integration of high-end, even luxury, shops and spaces dedicated to nomadic workers, address the station to social classes with high economic and cultural capital. The third level, finally, is political and economic: as a piece of the city responding to the challenges of territorial competitiveness, the City Booster station turns its back on its role as a "gateway to the city" to address a minority of users-consumers of the station. It is therefore only a ghost of the imaginary "cathedral of humanity" and agora that gave rise to it.
Le modèle City Booster, défini et développé par SNCF Gares & Connexions en 2017, repose sur des logiques économiques en intégrant dans le pôle gare des commerces afin de diversifier les activités de l'opérateur et les services proposés aux usagers. Présenté comme une nouvelle génération de la gare ouverte insérée fonctionnellement dans son environnement urbain, ce modèle est aujourd'hui considéré par les acteurs politiques décisionnaires comme un outil majeur de la métropolisation. La gare City Booster étant officiellement déclinée dans de nombreuses gares françaises, cet article propose de questionner son caractère duplicable dans des contextes métropolitains et ferroviaires différents. Une analyse de 30 gares métropolitaines françaises permet ainsi de démontrer la faible réalité de ce modèle qui répond avant tout à un besoin de l'opérateur ferroviaire de financer son patrimoine et ses activités ferroviaires, et repose sur un critère de flux impossible à remplir en dehors des plus grandes gares françaises-en matière de flux voyageurs annuels-principalement parisiennes.
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Dates et versions

hal-04230124 , version 1 (05-10-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04230124 , version 1

Citer

Marion Albertelli. La gare City Booster : un modèle fantôme au service des métropoles françaises ?. Géotransports, 2022, 16, p.45-64. ⟨hal-04230124⟩
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