The police prefect demands the cleanliness of the metro
Mr. Morain, the police prefect, has just informed the Metro and the Nord-Sud that he very much wants to see them less dirty from now on.
We had not yet noticed our filth, replied these administrations. But, to please you, we are going to clean ourselves up a little.
One has immediately persuaded its personnel to sweep the entrances to the stations; the other is talking about creating flying teams of underground cleaners. And we will soon see the broom and the watering can working.
But, since no one has given orders to purify the atmosphere as well, six million Parisians, suburbanites and foreigners will continue to absorb throughout the day air so stale that a guinea pig would die from a single centigram inoculated under its skin. It is hard to imagine, in fact, what bacillary colony lives freely in the dark tunnels and how much organic waste is composed of the breath of the two underground networks. Debris of sharp steel that tears the lungs, human dandruff, waste from nails, leather, wool or cotton, hair, spit, sweat, perfumes, scents and oozes of an innumerable crowd, which comes and goes, sows its fleas, brings its mud, talks, blows its nose, sneezes; there is everything, and more, including nothing healthy, down there!
The two administrations know it well. But they do not like it to be talked about. Because they prefer to admit that to clean their dark domain next to which the Augean stables were only lilies and roses, all that is needed is a sprinkler with lime water passing every four days over the rails and the little duster of the service women, at the stations.
They never asked themselves whether electric dust extractors would make the corridors as clean as those of the "tub" in London and whether modern aerators could not be installed where they were needed.
Built in a cramped way, no longer suitable for current traffic, by overly timid engineers, the networks, and the Underground especially, use rolling stock that is barely adequate on the central lines and good for scrapping on the eccentric lines. And nothing has been seriously done so far to give passengers and staff chemically breathable air.
When Mr. Morain sees the station entrances less dirty, let him go down the steps: there is much to do in the background too.
|
