Châtelet – Les Halles (pronounced /?at(?)l? le al/) is a major commuter train hub in Paris.
Taken together with the Paris Métro stations Châtelet and Les Halles, to which it is directly connected, it is the world’s largest underground station and subway station. The station hosts 750,000 travellers per day, counting 493,000 for the RER only[1].
It is named after the Châtelet monument and the former market of Les Halles.
there you go. if paris is le-coeur-du-monde (heart of the world), then Châtelet – Les Halles is the heart of paris. well not that it’s very meaningful, but it’s just the middle of the city and tons of metro/bus/RER lines intersect there. and I pass by there every there. that actually makes me rather happy.
IMO, Châtelet is an old, collapsing commuter hub. Largest underground station in the world, hell i think they simply combined 3 stations together: one of the metro lines stop twice within the whole station; the 3 parts have different station names; there are shops within the ‘paid’ area; the two furthest lines are 800m apart.
I’ve been unable to find a comprehensive layout plan of the station though.
second thing that’s been intriguing me is the sheer number of beggars and buskers this station can accomodate. there really are quite a few at any point of time. including a standard performance area. i think there are between 5 to 10 individuals/groups at any one time.
well anyway RATP claims 750,000 travellers daily. let’s assume that each person donates 10 euro cents per year to the beggars. which adds up to 75,000 euros per year, what a lot of money. if you divide that by 10 beggars, you get 7,500 euros per year, which is 625 euros per month. wow that’s a lot of money in loose change, and only 10 centimes per person per year. i mean, we lose more coins than that in the same amount of time.
but of course, there are beggars aplenty on the entire metro network, so the pie gets thinned out further. but we also need to take into account more passengers. and perhaps tourists. but then so many tourists never see the underground of paris anyway.
then we should also take into account that a great cut of the pie goes towards the better sounding musicians, nobody likes to give money to the loafers and the irritating ones. especially those who enter the carriage and make some stupid declaration of idiocy. seriously.
=]
Châtelet. what a nice name.
there are no nice pictures of Châtelet, i doubt it is possible. Châtelet is a haze in your memory, it is the swarm of commuters in the periphery of your vision, it is the endless turns into nondescript corners stairs tunnels, it is the just somewhere you pass by, somewhere which exists in your life, which means so much yet nothing at all. it is the stupid screeching escalator, the double trains which you sometimes do not know which will leave first, the scammer pretending to ask for english-speakers, the signs that direct you to walk one round to use the travellator, the faregates that do not always work, the wide exit at forum les halles that often lets you out without a ticket, the signs that cannot decide which is the best route, the ridiculous number of exits labelled with road names but no map of the station so that i rarely know where am i going to appear, one of the stations where you shouldnt try to cheat
-
the ’secondary school’ and ‘jc’ teachers are on strike again, the talks are not going well, but i always have lessons, i can’t go and kaypoh the “manifestation”. hai. perhaps when it gets warmer.