The Triangle de Gonesse station project, a "totem" in the open field

Uninhabitable, bordered by a motorway, overflown - apart from a health crisis - by airplanes from Le Bourget and Roissy, but strategically placed 20 km north of Paris and east of Val-d'Oise, the Triangle de Gonesse and its 280 hectares of agricultural land have long fueled the appetite of public authorities.

But large, expensive projects have lost the support of a part of the population who considers them contrary to environmental challenges.

In the wake of the abandonment of the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport project (Loire-Atlantique), Emmanuel Macron decided in November 2019 to abandon the Europacity mega-shopping and leisure complex, whose gigantism bristled as much environmentalists than small traders.

In the absence of this major job-vector project, local elected officials are now keenly attached to the construction of a metro station for the future line 17, supposed to link Saint-Denis to Roissy airport in 2030, and to an activity zone with still blurred outlines.

"Questioning the Triangle de Gonesse station is unthinkable", fulses Pascal Doll, president (DVD) of the Roissy-Pays de France agglomeration community, believing that the line is a "vital" need to boost economic activity , mainly oriented towards the airport.

"The only Grand Paris Express station in Val-d'Oise" would desaturate the road network and the RER B by transporting "around 15.000 travelers" per day, calculates Marie-Christine Cavecchi, president (LR) of the departmental council, supported by the president (Libres!) of the Ile-de-France region Valérie Pécresse.

In December, the prefect of Val-d'Oise Amaury de Saint-Quentin gave Matignon a report containing an eclectic list of possible projects around the station, on 110 hectares: a "school city with an international vocation", a "center conservation "of the National Library of France, a relay of the Rungis market ...

The arbitrations will be rendered by Jean Castex who must unveil, "a priori at the end of March" according to Matignon, a "plan" for this Ile-de-France department which has some 123.000 poor people.

"Irreversible risk"

But the opponents refuse any development and want to keep these "fertile lands" thanks to an alternative agricultural project based on short circuits.

"For forty years, they have always wanted, tried, to concrete" the site, grumbles Bernard Loup, indefatigable president of the Collective for the Triangle de Gonesse (CPTG).

This project is "completely useless compared to the needs of the inhabitants of the territory who demand that the hundreds of millions of arrows on the service of the Triangle be redirected towards the improvement of their daily transport", conspires the CPTG.

The cost of line 17 is estimated at nearly 3 billion euros.

The collective - supported by some elected officials - supports a "zone to defend" (ZAD) which has occupied part of the site since February 7, from which a tunnel boring machine must start.

"It is a major, irreversible risk to see these artificial lands while the Paris Agreement (on the climate of the COP21, note) was signed a few kilometers away at Le Bourget (...) and then even that everyone, hand on heart, multiplies green speeches, "tackle Julien Bayou, the national secretary of EELV.

The National Federation of Transport Users (Fnaut), which has long contested the interest of this line, calls for the site to be frozen.

The Société du Grand Paris (SGP), responsible for building the supermetro, has however started preparatory work on site. "Line 17 is still useful" because it is "a real daily transport route", says its president Thierry Dallard.

The station, "it has become the totem pole of the left: if you are for the urbanization of the Triangle, you are for siphoning off the planet", laments the elected regional socialist Ali Soumaré, convinced that agricultural projects and other , "structuring and reasonable", can "coexist".

Under such auspices, the commissioning of the station has already been postponed to 2028.