Paris Métro Line 1


Paris Métro Line 1 is one of the sixteen lines of the Paris Métro. It connects in the northwest and in the southeast. With a length of, it constitutes an important east–west transportation route within the City of Paris. Excluding Réseau Express Régional commuter lines, it is the second busiest line on the network with 181.2 million travellers in 2017 or 750,000 people per day on average in Fall 2025.
The line was the network's first to open, with its inaugural section entering service in 1900. It is also the network's first line to be converted from manually driven operation to fully automated operation. Conversion, which commenced in 2007 and was completed in 2011, included new rolling stock and laying of platform edge doors in all stations. The first eight MP 05 trains went into passenger service on 3 November 2011, allowing the accelerated transfer of the existing MP 89 CC stock to Line 4;. The conversion allowed Line 1 to operate as the system's second fully automated line, after Line 14.
A transition to fully automated services was done without major interruption to passenger traffic. The new MP 05 rolling stock was able to operate efficiently alongside the manually-driven MP 89 CC rolling stock until there were enough MP 05 to no longer facilitate the need of the MP 89. Full automation was achieved for evening services in May 2012, with an increase to weekend services by August 2012. As of 15 December 2012, Line 1 is fully automated. The remaining five MP 89 CC trains remained stored on Line 1 near the Fontenay workshops until a new garage for Line 4 was opened south of the new Mairie de Montrouge station in February 2013. Line 1 is currently being extended to Val de Fontenay to make a link with Paris Metro Line 15, RER A, RER E and an extension of Tram 1.

History

The Parisian metropolitan rail network has its origins in several decades of debate, more or less bizarre projects and tug of war between the State and the administration of the City of Paris. The deterioration of traffic conditions in Paris, the example of foreign capitals and the approach of the 1900 Universal Exhibition convinced the authorities to start construction of the metro. The solution proposed by the Mayor of Paris was finally adopted; the State conceded the design and construction of the work to the City of Paris. After the adoption by the municipal council on 20 April 1896 of the network project of Fulgence Bienvenüe and Edmond Huet, the "metropolitan railway" was declared a public utility by a law that became effective 30 March 1898.
File:Paris, rue de Rivoli - Fonds Trutat - MHNT.PHa.659.P.042.jpg|thumb|Construction work on Line 1's Palais Royal station on Rue de Rivoli. Photograph by Eugène Trutat kept at the Muséum de Toulouse.
This "railway of local interest" with electric traction, with a reduced loading gauge of wide and standard gauge, intended for the transport of passengers and their hand luggage, includes six lines:
Three lines were planned as a possible option: Place Valhubert – Quai de Conti, Place du Palais-Royal – Place du Danube and Auteuil – Place de l'Opéra.
Under an agreement of 27 January 1898 between the City and the Compagnie générale de traction, the network concessionaire, the company agreed to put the first three lines into service within eight years following the declaration of public utility. The first detailed traffic studies suggested swapping the termini of lines A and C: the trains on line A would terminate at Porte Maillot, constituting line 1 of the future network, while those on line C, the future line 3, would terminate at Porte Dauphine. It then also becomes possible to send the trains on the circular line to Porte Dauphine, and this terminus is then considered to be the start of line B.
Work on line 1 began on 4 October 1898, as part of an agreement between the Paris administration and the Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris, which stipulated that the city would build the network infrastructure, with the concessionaire building the superstructure.
From November 1898, the Paris administration began preparatory work for the construction of the first line of the metropolitan railway: construction of service tunnels between the line and the Seine for the evacuation of spoil, relocation of the collector sewer on the Rue de Rivoli, and rearrangement of the water pipes. The work on the line itself was carried out in record time: it lasted twenty months and was led by Fulgence Bienvenüe, a bridges and roads engineer, and financed by the city of Paris. The line was divided into eleven lots divided between several companies. Eleven shields were built for this work and installed under the roadways, with which approximately of tunnel were dug, including more than by the three Champigneul shields which dug from the Place de la Nation and that of the Porte Maillot. In order to reduce the duration of the construction site, however, the construction also made extensive use of traditional methods of galleries supported by pit props. Cut and cover work was only used for the construction of certain stations and a very small section of tunnel.
On 15 June 1900, Line 1 was handed over by the Paris administration to its operator, la Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris, which ran its trains to test the line and train personnel.

Commissioning

On 19 July 1900 at 1 p.m., the line was opened to the public between and to connect the various sites of the Universal Exhibition and serve the events of the 1900 Olympic Games in the Bois de Vincennes. It followed the monumental west-east axis in Paris. The line was inaugurated in a very discreet manner, because the Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris wanted a gradual increase in capacity. Only eight stations were completed and opened at the inauguration, while the other ten were gradually opened between 6 August and 1 September 1900. These eighteen stations were entirely built under the supervision of the engineer Fulgence Bienvenüe. Most of them were long and their platforms were wide. The external entrance canopies were designed by the emblematic architect of Art Nouveau, Hector Guimard.
file:PARIS - Chemin de fer métropolitain - Usine du Quai de la Rapée pour la production d'énergie électrique Les Dynamos.JPG|thumb|left|upright|The generators of the CMP Bercy power station, commissioned in March 1901.
Electricity was supplied, from March 1901, by the large power station that the CMP had built in the Bercy district, behind its administration building on the Quai de Bercy, where the RATP house, the company's headquarters, was now located. This plant supplied three-phase current at 5,000 volts 25 hertz, with its eighteen boilers with a heating surface of and its three 1,500 kW generator sets. Before the Bercy plant was commissioned, electricity was supplied by the companies Le Triphasé and the Compagnie générale de traction.
Parisians were immediately won over by this new means of transport, which allowed substantial time savings in conditions of better comfort than the forms of transport available on the surface. It was soon necessary to increase the frequency and length of the trains. Initially, operations began with a train every ten minutes, then every six minutes at peak times. At the end of January 1901, the frequency increased to one train every three minutes, in order to better meet the high demand, without however ending congestion, which reached four million cumulative passengers on 11 December 1900, or 130,000 per day.
The original trains had three cars, later increased to four, forming trains long. They therefore only occupied half of the station platforms, which were long. These all-wooden cars had only two single-leaf doors per side and the trains ran on axles, rather than bogies. The lengthening of the trains, which was easy to implement, was agreed, with the gradual replacement of the M1 motor cars and their -metre trailers by "Thomson-double" railcars and new trailers. The latter were equipped with double-leaf doors, improving the flow of passengers at the station. The composition of the trains reached six, seven and finally eight cars in 1902, with two motor cars flanking six trailers.
File:Sprague Bastille 1908.jpg|thumb|Sprague-Thomson train at Bastille station in 1908.
In 1905, the first trailers with axles disappeared completely and gave way to trains composed of seven cars, reduced to six cars in April 1906 with three motor cars flanking three short bogie trailers. In 1908, the equipment was modified again: new long cars of the Sprague-Thomson 500 class appeared. Their introduction on the line was possible thanks to the slight relocation of Bastille station with curves of a larger radius allowing the passage of longer cars. The sets increased to five cars, with three motor cars and two trailers.
Nevertheless, the continuous increase in traffic highlighted the lack of capacity of the rolling stock: a new class of trains appeared during the 1920s, with even longer cars, long, and engines with "small boxes", leaving more space for passengers. The five-car trains only had two engines for three trailers.

Extensions to the suburbs

On 24 March 1934, a first extension to the suburbs was put into service to the east to, leading to the abandonment of the return loop at Porte de Vincennes.
After the completion of the first three metro extensions outside the city of Paris to Vincennes, Boulogne-Billancourt and Issy-les-Moulineaux in 1934, the general council of the Seine department decided to build four new extensions, including a western extension of line 1 to.
The extension to the Pont de Neuilly faced several difficulties: the terminal loop at Porte Maillot station had been built in 1900 at a shallow depth, at approximately the same level as the Petite Ceinture line. It was therefore essential to reroute the line at the start of the return loop in order to lower the tunnel below the Petite Ceinture and to build a new Porte Maillot station. This work, undertaken in 1935, located within the old city walls, was the responsibility of the Paris city hall. The temporary terminus at Porte Maillot had four tracks divided into two ordinary stations with side platforms: the depth of the tunnel ruled out the construction of a single vaulted terminus of the type used at Porte de Charenton station. The old loop was thus abandoned and the line extended to the new terminus at Porte Maillot on 15 November 1936.
Beyond this section, the work was taken over by the Seine department: the tunnel was built under the Avenue de Neuilly. Originally planned with three stations, the extension ultimately only had two, including the terminus of. The latter, with only two tracks, was designed as a temporary terminus, because it was then planned to extend the line to La Défense with an under-river crossing of the Seine. This "provisional" station, which lasted more than fifty years, would be the cause of numerous operating problems twenty or thirty years later. The work on line 1 was actively carried out in order to be completed before the 1937 World's Fair. The line was opened for operation to Pont de Neuilly on 29 April 1937.