In Paris, the tram extends to the west, before perhaps completing the loop

Since Friday noon, line T3b allows you to reach Porte Dauphine (west), in the 15th arrondissement, in 16 minutes, from Porte d'Asnières (north-west), in the 17th arrondissement, not far from the Bois de Boulogne and of the ring road, noted an AFP journalist.

During rush hour, a tram can pass every 4 minutes.

“This is a part of Paris that needed to make more room for other modes of circulation than the car,” welcomed the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, during the inauguration.

With its complex intersections, cycle paths and vegetated areas, this 3,2 kilometer extension required more than four years of work.

The final cost is 200 million euros, financed mainly by the City of Paris, as well as by the Region and the State.

Only a final part of the Parisian periphery is no longer covered by the tram network, which has replaced the "PC" buses on three-quarters of the tour of Paris between Porte Dauphine and the Pont du Garigliano (south).

Studies will be relaunched by the end of 2024 to complete the loop by tram, a missing section that is particularly complicated because of the crossing of the Seine, according to the regional transport authority Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM).

“The tramway will only be finished when it is at the Garigliano bridge,” said the president of the Region and IDFM, Valérie Pécresse, thanking the mayor of Paris for her generosity in supporting tramway projects.

“It’s debatable,” commented Anne Hidalgo alongside her, noting that “the other sections were in working-class neighborhoods that needed requalification.”

The very bourgeois 16th arrondissement was opposed to the passage of the tram during the first projects in the 2000s.

The extension inaugurated on Friday should accommodate 55.000 passengers per day, which will make the T3b line the first in Ile-de-France, with 300.000 travelers between Porte de Vincennes (east) and Porte Dauphine.

The tramway notably serves Paris-Dauphine University and Porte Maillot, a gigantic crossroads between the Champs-Elysées and La Défense, where redevelopment work is due to finish in a few weeks. A station for an RER E extension is due to be inaugurated there at the beginning of May.

The extension arrives in time for the Olympics, when the tram will notably serve the Arena Porte de La Chapelle and the media center at Porte Maillot.

Of the five stops renamed on this occasion, four now bear the names of women who have left their mark on history: the pianist Marguerite Long, the resistance fighter Thérèse Pierre, the singer Anny Flore and the novelist and poet Anna de Noailles.

IDFM finances the operation of the tramway to the tune of 5 million euros per year and has purchased nine additional trainsets from Alstom.

It remains to protect the traffic conditions of the tram, whose average speed is 15,8 kilometers/hour on this extension.

Friday morning, a truck got stuck on the south route of T3, disrupting traffic for several hours.

“It’s a real subject”, underlined the president of the RATP Jean Castex, evoking the video fines of motorists at fault as “one of the solutions”.