Ghost stations of the Paris Métro

Ghost stations of the Paris Métro are stations that have been closed to the public and are no longer used in commercial service. For historical or economical reasons, many stations on the Paris Métro have been made inaccessible and lie unused, conferring a sense of mystery over Parisians.

The majority of these ghost stations were closed when France entered World War II in September 1939, and some have been closed ever since. Others have been reused or disappeared completely as the network evolved. Two stations were constructed but never actually used, and today still lie inaccessible to the public. Three others were designed but were never serviced by a Métro line.

Two stations on the Paris Métro were constructed but never used, and have no way to be accessed by the public: Porte Molitor and Haxo. Only during rare special service to these stations can they be visited.

Porte Molitor is a station constructed in 1923 on a linking of lines 9 and 10 and was originally intended to service the stadiums Parc des Princes and Roland Garros on the nights of matches. Logistics of this service became too complex, however, and the project was abandoned; access to the station was never constructed. The tracks today serve as a garage for trains.

A special tunnel, the voie des Fêtes, links the Place des Fêtes to the Porte des Lilas with an intermediary station called Haxo, constructed in 1921. This tunnel was intended to connect lines 3 and 7 (now 3bis and 7bis). Actually the tunnel was never used as it was decided to run a shuttle service between the stations of each of these lines. This shuttle proved unpopular with passengers and service stopped in 1939. Haxo has never been used for passenger transport, and there is no street level access.

At the beginning of World War II, the French government put into action a plan that called for reduced service on the Métro network; specifically, it closed all but 85 stations. The majority of stations that were closed reopened in the following years, however some lightly trafficked and therefore unprofitable stations remained closed for a longer time.

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