After three years of renovation works, the Toulouse-Matabiau station was inaugurated to boos

The Matabiau station in Toulouse was inaugurated on Tuesday to the boos of a hundred railway workers gathered together as unions, who denounced inadequate renovation after three years of work. “Gravediggers of public services”, “Your pockets are touching the ground”, protesters shouted at SNCF representatives, including its director general, Jean-Pierre Farandou, and local elected officials present. They denounced, in particular, the place given to shops in the new station, while the ticket offices were closed or replaced by digital terminals.

“We don’t think about the staff at all: there is no water point or bathroom for them, they will have to climb the stairs,” also laments his CFDT counterpart, Cédric Ambroziewicz, 44. Built in the mid-19th century, at a time when the railways were booming, the station has been renovated to adapt it to the number of passengers, and the SNCF hopes to “triple” the influx of 50,000 people a day.

“A Good Facelift”

“It needed a good facelift,” said Jean-Pierre Farandou, stressing the importance of this station in the context of the construction of the Bordeaux-Toulouse high-speed line, work on which should begin at the end of the year or early 2024. The president of the Occitania region, Carole Delga, took the opportunity to reaffirm her desire for a direct rail connection between Toulouse and Barcelona, ​​”absolutely necessary”, according to her.

These three years of renovation also aimed to make the station more accessible for people with reduced mobility, by installing lifts and expanding underground access to trains, for example. Insufficient measures for the Handisocial association for the defense of people with disabilities, which denounced several deficiencies such as the lack of accessibility of the control terminals for people in wheelchairs. “I’m waiting for something concrete,” criticized the president of the association Odile Maurin, directly rebuking Jean-Pierre Farandou.

The works, whose cost is estimated at 42 million euros, also made it possible to renovate the carpentry of this building classified as a historic monument, as well as the awning, the glass projection over the station entrance.