"To take into account the impacts of this health crisis, SNCF TGV has decided to reduce a certain number of services", explains the rail group on Thursday.

The attendance figures for a month and a half show a difficult start.

And the forecasts for the next few months are pessimistic.

SNCF will remove TGVs in the coming months to adapt supply to demand that has not returned to the start of the school year, and to avoid running empty trains, she said Thursday.

After a relatively good summer thanks to low prices and the need of the French to move and see their loved ones, "back to school is difficult", with trains half empty during the week, a spokesperson told AFP in a context this coronavirus crisis.

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If TGVs are currently two-thirds full on weekends, business customers are down 60 to 70% during the week, she noted.

"The forecasts for the next few months are pessimistic," she added, noting that the first bookings for the holiday season were "disappointing".

"Case by case"

"It is not economically or ecologically responsible for circulating TGVs that are not full. This is why, to take into account the impacts of this health crisis, SNCF TGV has decided to reduce a certain number of services", said the spokesperson.

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But "there is no national plan", she said, insisting on the "temporary" nature of these measures and speaking of "adaptations": "Only on a case by case basis depending on each local situation . "

"We are not canceling, we are suspending, the time of the health crisis. (…) These suspensions are not decided out of gaiety of heart", because "the will of SNCF, its raison d'être, is to run trains, "she pleaded.

TER alternatives

These TGV service suspensions could, according to her, be "stopped, adapted or extended over all or part of 2021, depending on the evolution of traffic or if the context persisted".

As a replacement, management has sought to find alternatives to TER - with longer journeys, of course - while other TGVs may make additional stops in compensation, she noted.

Unlike the Intercités, TER and trains in the Parisian suburbs which are subsidized by the State and the regions, TGVs are directly organized by the SNCF, on its own funds.

They have so far lost more than 3 billion euros due to the collapse of passenger traffic due to the pandemic, according to the public group.