RER-B revamp

The northern half of the RER-B, which is the SNCF^▸ -run half, has been revamped and the new service was launched last week. This is the line from Gare du Nord (or "Paris Nord") to "Aeroport Charles de Gaulle 2 TGV^▸ " and Mitry Claye, dividing at Aulnay-sous-Bois. If you have been to Paris recently via Roissy CDG and the RER you may have seen the works going on.

What they have done has interesting parallels with Crossrail in particular, and other local service in general. Of course in some respects Crossrail has its origins in ^RER envy^, since joining two (or more) suburban services by a line across a city has big advantages ^ no terminus capacity limit, easy (?) interchanges to a choice of underground lines rather than a longer ones at a terminus, and added capacity within the city.

What they have done is:
^   Raised platforms to close to train floor level. This is in a sense adopting British practice, though I suspect the resulting height is a bit lower than here as train floors at doorways are lower.
^   Improved passenger flow at stations with escalators, footbridges, and lots of new lifts.
^   Refurbished trains.
^   New passenger information screens and video surveillance.
^   Lengthened canopies to the full platform length. This is not one I have heard before ^ the objective is to maintain speed of loading/unloading when it rains, rather than have passengers crowding the middle of the train.
^   Giving RER-B its own exclusive pair of tracks and platforms. This is more Crossrail than Crossrail itself! Whether the other tracks are still available to provide resilience is unclear; they are not used to speed up the non-stop airport trains.
^   Operating a ^metro service^, which implies every train stops at every station, all day ^ which Crossrail has given up on.
^   Metro service also means a train every six minutes on each branch (every 3 minutes Gare du Nord to Aulnay sous-Bois) during peak times, which are a bit longer now. Off-peak it is one per 15 minutes each branch, plus a direct train to/from the airport every 15 minutes (it only saves 4 minutes!).
^   Peak times here means only in the peak direction; the other way the service is decreased a little by trains terminating at La Plaine-Stade de France.

The peak service level of twenty trains an hour through Gare du Nord is not an increase - though if they manage to run this timetable reliably that would be new. This other half of RER-B, which RATP runs, is promised the same treatment, but not within five years.