Anyone heading to one of Paris’s two airports on Thursday might have a torrid day of travel ahead of them after drivers on the RER B called a day’s strike.
According to reports only one train out of two on the RER B will be running on Thursday during rush hour and only one per hour for most of the day.
The RER B line serves both Charles de Gaulle Airport to the north of the city and Orly to the south.
RER B is already notorious with commuters for its regular delays and it is routinely disrupted by strikes which can hause havoc for air passengers to the French capital
.
The 900,000 daily users on the line will face major disruptions in the section of the line heading south from Gare du Nord.
The strike was called by four unions to denounce the pressure on drivers to meet targets to stick to the train schedules and avoid delays, which is linked to their pay.
Unions say sometimes safety rules are sacrificed to ensure trains can arrive on time, for example suspect packages that are ignored because the procedure of having them checked would cause a delay.
“Our objectives to be on time are attainable on paper but not in reality,” one union rep told Le Parisien newspaper.
The strike is also predicted to have knock-on effects for road traffic around Paris, which this week broke a record by totalling up 450 km of jams.
http://www.thelocal.fr/20141009/paris-trains-to-airports-hit-by-strike