Paris celebrated the inauguration of the Villejuif – Gustave Roussy station, between Olympiades and Orly Airport, marking the opening of the last station of Line 14’s southern extension, completed just ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic & Paralympic Games.
The station is a significant milestone for the development of the new city’s metro network which will expand with four additional lines by 2031.
An official ceremony was held at the station on January 18, 2025, attended by Valérie Pécresse the President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France, the French architect Dominique Perrault, who worked closely with the Société des grands projets to design the station, the representatives of Sadev 94, the developer of tailor-made and innovative urban projects in the south-eastern quarter of the Greater Paris Metropolis, the representatives of Grand Paris Express, City of Villejui, Val-de-Marne (a department located in the Île-de-France region), RATP, Île-de-France Mobilités, Egis, Setec, Bouygues Construction, Vinci Construction and others.
“The spectacular Villejuif – Gustave Roussy station on Line 14 is open. This is a radical change for residents who will reach Châtelet in 15 minutes. But also for all the patients and caregivers at the Gustave Roussy hospital. In the summer of 2026, the station will allow connections with line 15 south for 100,000 passengers,” Valérie Pécresse said.
In January, the station opens its doors to passengers on line 14, before welcoming, around the summer of 2026, those on Line 15.
The new station is expected to be used by 20,000 daily passengers playing a crucial role in transport transformation. With its six exterior entrances, the station is aimed at nearly 19,000 residents within a 1 km radius. It will become a new mobility hub in the south of the capital, with nearly 100,000 travellers expected each day after the commissioning of Line 15 South.
The station is managed by the ORA Consortium, responsible for the operation and maintenance of Line 15 South on behalf of Île-de-France Mobilités. The consortium oversees the supervision of automated metro operations, station management, centralized control systems, and maintenance of station equipment and rolling stock, all while ensuring an unparalleled passenger experience.
Serving as the last station to be opened on Line 14 of the Paris metro and the first station connecting to the future Line 15 South set to open by 2026, Villejuif – Gustave Roussy station is positioned as a key mobility hub for the Île-de-France region.
This important achievement highlights the collective efforts of the ORA Consortium, responsible for operating and maintaining Line 15 South, led by RATP Dev alongside partners Alstom and ComfortDelGro.
In July 2023, the Board of Directors of Île-de-France Mobilités has awarded the operating and maintenance contract for Line 15 South of the Grand Paris Express (GPE) to the international consortium ORA made up of RATP Dev, majority shareholder, Alstom and ComfortDelGro.
The new station serves as a crucial link between the recently extended Line 14 and the upcoming Line 15 South, two backbones of the new Greater Paris metro network. This achievement reflects the collective efforts of Île-de-France Mobilités, the Public Transport Authority in the region, RATP Group and Société des Grands Projets (SGP).
“Since being awarded the Line 15 project in July 2023 by Île-de-France Mobilités, our teams have been fully mobilised on delivering this transformative mobility project for the millions of residents of the Île-de-France region. The inauguration of the Villejuif – Gustave Roussy station is the first milestone, and a moment of pride for the 65 women and men now operating the first station of Line 15, connecting to Paris’ backbone Line 14,” Hiba Farès, CEO of RATP Dev, said.
At the intersection of lines 14 and 15 of the future Grand Paris Express network, it will eventually see 100,000 travellers pass through, becoming one of the busiest in the region. Particularly anticipated, it is nestled on the edge of the Parc des Hautes-Bruyères, at the foot of Gustave-Roussy where more than 3,000 people work.
The entire Line 15 will form a 75-km loop around Paris, connecting 45 municipalities and serving over 1.5 million passengers daily. The first segment is the Line 15 South. The new automatic metro Line 15 South is scheduled to enter service at the end of 2025 and will run for 33 km, crossing 22 municipalities and serving 16 stations near Paris. The contract signed with the ORA consortium, which will last for 6 years and can be extended for up to 9 years, includes the operation of the automatic metro, the stations, the centralised control centre (PCC), as well as the maintenance and servicing of the rolling stock. The consortium’s scope of action will also cover the management of passenger relations and information.
Construction of Villejuif – Gustave Roussy station
Since 2017, dozens of companies and hundreds of workers have been working on the construction of the Villejuif – Gustave Roussy station. For the excavation work 300,000 cubic meters of earth have been removed during the construction and the engineering precision consisted of 5,600 cubic meters of diaphragm walls, each 64 cm thick, installed in 7-meter-wide sections.
Located in the immediate vicinity of the Hautes-Bruyères departmental park, in the town of Villejuif, the station occupies a large urban area of 7,500m2 in surface area. Its great depth complicated the works operations, in particular to allow the perpendicular crossing of two lines of the new metro, a unique feat on the Grand Paris Express. The Société des grands projets and its partners had to overcome unprecedented technical challenges to build this station.
Villejuif – Gustave Roussy station is the second deepest station on the Grand Paris Express, after Saint-Maur – Créteil, on Line 15 South, with platforms located at a depth of almost 50 metres. To create the deep walls, construction work on the underground walls began in October 2017 using the diaphragm wall method and 7,000 m3 of concrete were needed to make them. Starting the summer of 2018, the station was dug by teams from the CAP consortium comprising Vinci construction and Spie Batignolles. These operations lasted two and a half years, until the summer of 2021.
Nearly 300,000 m3 of earth were excavated – the volume of 120 Olympic swimming pools – to create a huge hole 62 metres in diameter and 51 metres deep.
In January 2020, the Allison tunnel boring machine crossed the station from its southern end to reach the northern end in order to continue its route as part of the extension of Line 14. This complex operation required the 1,400-tonne tunnel boring machine to be moved on a suspended frame bridge 12 metres high, in the middle of the station. The teams of the L14Sud Dodin / Vinci / Spie Batignolles consortium successfully completed this perilous stage in just a few weeks.
In spring 2022, the first escalators, supplied by the Schindler, were installed on level -7 before being joined by the 4 monumental staircases a year later. The installation of these 40-meter-long staircases on a metal structure balanced in the station’s shaft void is a real technical feat. At the same time, on the platforms, work has also progressed rapidly with the installation of platform facades for Line 14 and from spring 2023 on the platforms of line 15 South. The installation of passenger equipment continued in September 2023 with the installation of the first elevators by the Kone company.
The station features a circular structure 62 meters in diameter and 51 meters deep, has nine underground levels, with Line 14 operating at level -7 located at a depth of 36.7m and Line 15 South at level -9 located at a depth of 48.8m. The station has an extensive space of 15,600 square meters, 60% of which is allocated to technical facilities. To provide comprehensive mobility solutions, the station is equipped with 32 escalators, 16 elevators fully accesibile, and two monumental staircases, each 40 meters long.
Since June 2024, the work teams have been hard at work to ensure the technical management of the station is handed over to the transport authority, Île-de-France Mobilités, in December 2024.
On December 19, 2024, the Société des grands projets handed over the Villejuif – Gustave Roussy station to technical management, a step that marks the end of work on this emblematic structure of the Grand Paris Express. In order to make this station possible, the Société des grands projets brought together architectural ambition, technical prowess and excellence in French engineering.
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