Paris city hall – which is not in charge of the project – has for a year pushed for changes from the sidelines, saying there wasn’t enough space for bikes, not enough thought about rail-users and too much commercial focus, that the project was ridiculously big just to enable a private firm to make money. But suddenly this month, Paris city hall under Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo,
toughened its stance, arguing the “needless” shopping complex should be scrapped and instead the state should fund a much smaller and simple refit. The government and the state railway insists the full project must go ahead if France’s image is to be upheld for the Olympics.
In his office at city hall, Paris’s head of urban planning, Jean-Louis Missika said: “A station is about creating a sense of airiness and emptiness, allowing passengers to calmly connect to this monumental public space, it is not about stuffing it full of obstacles for them.” He wanted a return to “the feeling that stations were the big industrial cathedrals of the 19th century” – with the addition, above all, of more space for bikes and connections to public transport.
At the Eurostar terminal, Florent, 24, a politics student on his way to visit his sister in London, looked out over bustle. “There’s too much privatisation of public space everywhere else already, stations should be for the passengers,” he said. “But I prefer St Pancras, it seems to have more of a link to history.”
