Train, metro, Linéo… What is (or will be) the most efficient form of transport between Toulouse and Colomiers?
By Guillaume Laurent
Published on
While Tisséo plans to rebrand the future 3e lines metro “Line C” and assign it a green color on the maps of the network, a great upheaval also awaits “the current Line C”, this rail link which is based Colomiers to Arenas, a Toulouse. But what will be the best way to get to the Pink City… when a Linéo also serves Colomiers and the Arènes?! If the user has enough to lose his Latin, here are the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three (future) means of transport to connect the two largest cities Haute-Garonne.
#FORM. What you need to know about the train line, future… “RER C”?
The current “line C” that local authorities are going to have to rename – and that the Rallumons L’Étoile collective would see receiving a premonitory “RER C” – is a railway line which allows you to link Colomiers-Station a Toulouse. 7 kilometers long, it has six stations, and serves the Ramassiers district in Colomiers, before arriving in the town of Toulouse, via Saint-Martin-du-Touch, Lardenne, then crossing the ring road to reach the Toec and finally the Arènes station, its terminus, to the west of Toulouse. All in 14 mins… and even six minute timer for direct trains! Unbeatable… for those who don’t want to reach the hypercentre of Toulouse without connecting to the Arènes metro. 4,000 users make this choice on a daily basis, according to Tisséo.
Too few know it, but since 1993, and the entry into service of the metro, local authorities have agreed to implement a single ticket : in each of the six stations, travelers can take the trains with a metro ticket, or another Tisséo urban transport ticket. If all is not rosy, it remains the tree that hides the forest in a world of transport where intermodality is very complicated!
- Frequency : 30 minutes during rush hour.
- Attendance: 4,000 users per day on average.
- Total travel time: 6 minutes from Colomiers-Gare aux Arènes without stopping (approximately one out of three trains), 14 minutes from Colomiers-Gare aux Arènes with stops at all four stations (two out of three trains).
#BUS. What you need to know about the bus line, “Linéo 2”
The express bus line Lineo 2 connects it, the Lycée International de Colomiers, further west than the station, to the Arènes district. It serves the TOEC station, the Colomiers station and the Colomiers international station, but also the Hippodrome and Cartoucherie tram stations, as well as the Zénith, Casselardit, Purpan, the Purpan Shopping Center, Saint-Martin- du-Touch. In total, no less than 33 stops are on its path. This Linéo also allows him to reach the metro at the Arènes.
Like all Linéos, these buses display the “high quality of service” claimed by Tisséo, with a wide range of hours (from 5:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. Monday to Friday, from 5:50 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. on Saturday and from 6 a.m. to 1:10 a.m. on Sunday), real-time information, etc. Tisséo announces a passage every 9 minutes in rush hour. The Linéo is used three times more than the train line, since 12,000 users borrow it every day, according to Tisséo. It offers extended timetables, allows a much finer network in the districts of Colomiers and Toulouse than with the train… but with a longer journey!
- Frequency : 9 minutes during peak hours, 12 during off-peak hours.
- Attendance: 12,000 users per day on average.
- Total travel time: 57 minutes from Colomiers-Gare aux Arènes (during rush hour).
#SUBWAY. What you need to know about the metro line, future “line C”
The future Metro line C will also depart from Colomiers-Gare, and the station will be located in the immediate vicinity of the SNCF station. Its route will be entirely underground up to Montaudran, and the tunnel will pass further north than the railway line, to follow the Airbus factories of Colomiers, Saint-Martin-du-Touch, and join Jean Maga.
Easily served from the RN124, the axis that connects Auch to Toulouse, this station is intended to attract residents who reach the Pink City from the west and the Gers, so that they leave their cars at the gates of the Metropolis. It will allow them to reach the aeronautical factories, the airport via the future express tram, but also many districts of Toulouse: La Vache, where they could branch off to line B, as well as the entire eastern part of the city center (Marengo , François Verdier), and as far as Labège, 27 km further.
Its frequencies will be approximately ten times more regular than the train, and allows much more massive passenger transport. In concrete terms, this will be the most practical mode of transport for users who will be traveling on the route of the future line C, but also on that of line B. For those who go to a station on line A, on the other hand, they will probably find it quicker to reach Toulouse by train via the Arènes… provided they take the right carriage!
- Frequency : 3 minutes 25 on commissioning, which can go down to 1 minute 25.
- Attendance (estimated): 11,600 users per day on average for the Colomiers station alone.
- Total travel time: 13 minutes from Colomiers-Gare to La Vache, 20 minutes from Colomiers-Gare to Marengo, 22 minutes from Colomiers-Gare to François Verdier, and 37 minutes from Colomiers-Gare to the Labège La Cadène terminus.
What complementarity between all this?
Don’t these lines think of competing with each other, and will the new “line C” of the metro certainly find its place? “Even if in Colomiers, the metro and the train do not pass very far, the routes are complementary,” says Jean-Michel Lattes. “The only one that is really connected is Colomiers Gare”, the conurbation’s future intermodal hub called to ramp up. “The train goes to Les Ramassiers and Saint-Martin-du-Touch, when the metro will serve the Airbus factories much better. We are not aiming for the same routes.
“We saw this when we launched the Linéo 2 between Colomiers and Les Arènes, even if it is not quite the route of the current line C. Today, there are users of Colomiers who found there. The big difference is the frequency. When you provide fast service, they come back to take advantage of it, whereas the train line has a very minimal frequency, about one passage every half hour, and that “it also suffers, it is true, from a lack of notoriety”.
And if the current train line will ultimately be more direct and faster to go to certain sectors of Toulouse than the future line C, Jean-Michel Lattes points out that it will also have “a much lower frequency” than the metro, even assuming that it ran every 15 minutes, as envisaged by the most ambitious scheme of the Toulouse RER.
Metro works start in Colomiers, the sensitive bus station
The Colomiers-Gare station of the future metro line C will be integrated into the future multimodal exchange hub, made up of a 1,000-space silo relay car park (instead of, in particular, the existing surface parking lot), but also a bus station, bicycle parking “including 100 with regulated access in a secure room”, specifies Tisséo, without forgetting “a carpool drop-off/recovery area with 20 places”.
Note that the car park of the current station will be closed to parking from March 2023. In the meantime, Tisséo has announced the commissioning of a temporary bus station, from this Monday, October 17, in place of the station of the current bus whose right-of-way will be occupied by the construction site of the terminus station of the 3rd metro line. This bus station will be temporarily located 200 meters from the railway station, at the level of the François-Mitterrand esplanade.
Work on the notoriety of line C
It should be remembered that the various parties concerned (town halls of Colomiers and Toulouse, Tisséo) have agreed to launch a vast rename operation which concerns both the 3e metro line (which will become line C, therefore), the future stations “for which until now we had technical and provisional names”, but also the train line which must be renamed. Faced with the risk of confusion that this may cause for the user, “work is being carried out on the name of the train line »currently called line C, had indicated Jean-Michel Lattes.
“The name of line C was already assigned to the part of the train that connects Les Arènes to Colomiers, but it never took. If you do a survey in a bus asking users ‘Do you know line C?’ , not one will answer yes!”
Hide this “line C” that I cannot see…
While the current line C had – momentarily – disappeared from the subway maps, triggering the wrath of the Columérins and rail defenders, Jean-Michel Lattes assures us that it was “of an error”. He details: “I asked the services that we only remove the name of the current line C from our plans when we have replaced it with another name, otherwise it is ambiguous for the user” .
As for knowing what will be its future denomination, “I don’t know what I’m going to call it, but there are things to do to try to improve it,” says Jean-Michel Lattes. Convinced that the SNCF line is “a plus” in the panoply of public transport in the agglomeration, the vice-president of the Metropolis wants to take advantage of it to make it known, under its future name: “This portion of the train, which corresponds a a kind of RER between the Arènes and Colomiers, even if there is no frequency, it is an asset in the network. It needs to be upgraded.”
For “it to gain notoriety”, Jean-Michel Lattes wants “a communication operation” on this future-ex line C, in order to make users aware the “choices” available to them, today, and in 2028, the year which would also be the year in which the metro will be delivered.
A railway line about to be doubled
A real exception in the Toulouse landscape, this railway line, operated by the SNCF, is co-financed by a grant from Tisséo, but Jean-Michel Lattes wishes to recall that “the one who has control of it is the SNCF…”. At the same time, the Region and the SNCF are currently working on doubling of this line between Colomiers Gare and Brax-Léguevin station, which will allow in particular a better crossing of the trains, in order to to increase their frequency. The commissioning of this project, which would almost have a foretaste of the “Toulouse RER”, would workforce by 2028, according to the announced schedule. In order to contradict any future real estate project in the sector, the prefecture has already decided to “freeze” the land in three municipalities crossed by the line: Brax, Pibrac and Colomiers.
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