02 December, 2010

The streetcar of Angers on Ralliement square

The streetcar of Angers is in sight. For the first time, it showed its face on december 1st in Ralliement square. The freezy atmosphere was warmed up by the huts of the Christmas market, the merry-go-round and even a band dressed up in Christmas trees. So the arrival of the streetcar sounds like a fair for the shop owners along the line (almost in that part of the city) as well as the pedestrians.

If the shape and the colours of the trolley are quite familiar to the inhabitants, the interior will be, for many, a discovery. The green seats are striped of brown and red lines and the ceiling of the coaches is decorated with leaves giving the traveller the feeling of a quiet atmosphere. The inner space is organized along the train around a large corridor (almost the double of the buses) and seats are sometimes perpendicular, sometimes parallel to the direction of the line. Travellers will be able to circulate from a coach to another and take advantage, through large windows, of the views on Angers from the beginning, the end or the sides of the train.

The Foch boulevard offers now a new perspective. Litlle by little, the fences, the vehicles of the construction site and rubble disappear making room for the green and the slates surfaces of the line brighten up with box hedges and hornbeams. Probably because the line is not yet electrified, the two trains parked in Ralliement plazza were pulled by a lorry. So the inhabitants still have something to discover...

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