Mr Mongin was joined by Ms Nathalie Koscisusko-Morizet, French minister for ecology, sustainable development, transport and housing, and Mr Jean-Paul Huchon, president of the îl-de-France regional council, to commemorate the event, which RATP says is the first time that a metro line has been automated without an interruption to services.
Eight automatic driverless trains have been introduced on the line which will initially run in tandem with manually-operated trains. Two additional trains will be added each month until December 2012 when all 49 trains that operate on the 16.6km east-west line will be entirely automated.
The trains will then be capable of running at 85 second headways, compared with 105 seconds at present.
Siemens was awarded the contract to automate the line in November 2005 and has delivered its Trainguard MT CBTC solution, control centre, which controls train movements, and 954 platform screen doors for each of the line's platforms.
The cost of the project to automate the line, which serves up to 725,000 passengers per day and is the busiest on the Paris metro, is Euros 600m. This is the second fully-automatic driverless line in Paris following Line 14, which was built as a driverless line from the outset.
