Paris city hall has promised to fight a government decision to give the go-ahead to a €600m (£540m) redevelopment of Europe’s busiest railway station, the Gare du Nord, described by its opponents as an urban disaster.
“The city will explore all possible political and legal routes to block this project, using all the tools at our disposition,” Emmanuel Grégoire, the deputy mayor for urban development, said on Wednesday. “We will be appealing, obviously.”
Grégoire described the project as “an utter absurdity” and the timescale for its completion as “neither credible nor serious”. Serge Remy, the head of a local residents’ group, said the overhaul was “bad for users and bad for residents”.
Under the plans, the sprawling, 150-year-old station – whose SNCF national services to northern France, international Eurostar and Thalys trains to the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, four suburban RER lines and two Paris Métro lines serve about 700,000 passengers a day – is due to more than triple in size.