RER B, D and Transiliens: major disruptions during All Saints' Day vacation 2024

The Olympics are well and truly over, and after a strike that disrupted travel on the RER B on Tuesday, there's still more to come on the transport front. The SNCF has announced a massive reduction in traffic on the RER B, D and Transiliens H and K trains, due to the modernization of a railway bridge at Saint-Denis. The bridge, built in 1894, requires urgent replacement to avoid reliability problems. The work will take place over the All Saints' vacation period 2024, from October 25 to 27 and from 1ᵉʳ to November 2, with a significant reduction in service, affecting several million users.

• On the RER B, only nine trains an hour will run on the northern axis, and only one train in two between Paris Gare du Nord and Denfert-Rochereau. The interconnection at Gare du Nord will be cut, complicating connections.
• On the RER D, there will be just six trains an hour, and no traffic between Paris Gare du Nord and Châtelet-les-Halles.
• For Transiliens, the H line will be limited to eleven trains per hour.
• Line K will be completely interrupted.

To compensate for these disruptions, several alternative transport solutions are being put in place. Île-de-France Mobilités is reinforcing metro lines 4, 5 and 14, with increased frequencies. Line 4, in particular, will be particularly busy between Gare du Nord and Châtelet, where cuts to the RER D will be most noticeable. Users can also take bus 150, whose service will be stepped up between La Courneuve and metro line 12 at Aubervilliers. In addition, a shuttle bus will run between La Plaine Stade de France and Saint-Denis Pleyel, bypassing the cut sections.

For those wishing to avoid the disruption altogether, it's advisable to opt for other means of transport, such as self-service bicycles, available near stations affected by the cuts, or to use car-sharing services offered via apps like Blablacar or Karos, which can facilitate suburb-to-suburb journeys. As you might expect, the final solution is telecommuting.

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Passengers travelling to Beauvais and Crépy-en-Valois will have to be patient: TER trains connecting to Paris will operate at the rate of one train per hour, with longer journey times. On the weekend of October 26 and 27, only trains between Crépy-en-Valois and Laon will run.

Although the work will cause disruption during the All Saints' vacation period, it won't stop there. A new phase of work is already scheduled for the winter vacations, from February 14 to 17 and February 21 to 24, 2025. Users will therefore need to keep a close eye on communications fromÎle-de-France Mobilités to better plan their future journeys.

It is advisable to plan ahead, explore alternatives and keep up to date with the latest information on the SNCF andÎle-de-France Mobilités websites, to avoid suffering the full impact of these major traffic cuts.