Coordinates: 50°38′09″N 3°00′51″E / 50.6358°N 3.0142°E / 50.6358; 3.0142

Lomme was a town in the Nord département of northern France. It was absorbed as a commune associée by the city of Lille in 2000. At the 1999 census its population was 27,940 inhabitants.

The Lille metro (French: Métro de Lille) is a driverless metro in France. It was inaugurated on 25 April 1983 and was the first to use VAL (French: véhicule automatique léger, English: light automated vehicle) system.

The metro forms part of a multi-modal mode public transport system with buses and trams, operated under the Transpole brand and covering the Lille metropolitan area.

Construction started in 1978 and the first line was inaugurated on 25 April 1983 between 4 Cantons and République. On 2 May 1984 line 1 was completed (13.5 km long, 8.5 km underground), linking CHR B Calmette to 4 Cantons via Gare de Lille Flandres, with 18 stations. All stations have doors between the platform and the train.

Line 2 opened on 3 April 1989 and it reached CH Dron near the Belgian border on 27 October 2000. It is 32 km long with 43 stations.

Trains are 2 metres wide and 26 m long (two linked cars), and are rubber-tyred. Platforms are 52 m long, long enough for two units. One unit can carry 156 passengers.

Freddy Maertens (born 13 February 1952 in Nieuwpoort) is a Belgian former professional racing cyclist and twice World Road Race Champion.

In Italy in 1976, he won in front of Italians Francesco Moser and Tino Conti. In Prague in 1981, he beat Italian Giuseppe Saronni and France's Bernard Hinault. He was also second in the 1973 world championship.

Maertens also won the 1977 Vuelta a España, taking more than half the stages; 13 in total, and took the spinters' maillot vert in the Tour de France three times (1976, 1978 and 1981). In 1976 he won a record-equalling eight stages of the Tour de France; the following year (1977), he took seven stages in the Giro d'Italia.

Outside the Grand Tours, his stage race victories included Paris–Nice (1977), the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque (1973, 1975, 1976 and 1978), the Tour of Andalucia (1974, 1975), Tour of Belgium (1974, 1975), Tour de Luxembourg (1975), Tour of Sardinia (1977) and Vuelta y Catalunya (1977).

However, despite his sprinting dominance during the 1970s, Maertens did not win a one-day Classic, coming closest with second places in the Ronde van Vlaanderen (1973) and Liège–Bastogne–Liège (1976). He was disqualified from second place in the 1977 Ronde, which was already highly debated due to an illegal bike change by Maertens on the Koppenberg climb, because of the stimul affair. His other major one-day road race victories included: