Xi'an's Og

On my last trip to Warwick, the local (RER) train I boarded broke on its way to the CDG airport, after hitting something in a tunnel just three stops short of the airport, with so much delay and misleading communication that I missed my flight. While a minor issue for me, since I managed to work (and blog) in an airport lounge for most of the day—where I crossed path with Numerobis—, while waiting for the only flight to B’ham, this made me to reflect anew on the very poor state of the transportation network in Paris and its suburbs, with such incidents (power failures, broken rails, vetust engines, stolen cables, idiots on the tracks, &tc., even without mentioning the strikes) more and more the norm. And to wonder at how the ancient and bursting network is going to cope with the incoming flow of visitors attending the Olympics this summer… Actually, when compared with the other cities with a fairly reasonably efficient airport connection I experienced, it remains a mystery to me why the Greater Paris conurbation—whose president, Valérie Pécresse, was apparently deemed the main culprit for our train break by an incensed fellow passenger that morning!—has kept for years postponing the construction of a dedicated rail line between the airport and central Paris, as the unpredictable and uncomfortable suburban train is not delivering the intended message to Paris visitors and their still-growing contribution to the French GNP. But with the growing public opposition to any new infrastructure, incl. trains, this is unlikely to happen!