A Flixbus bus.

(illustration) -

Caro / Conradi / SIPA

Like the entire tourism sector, "Macron buses" have suffered from the decline in travel with the coronavirus.

If traffic was “almost stable” in the first quarter, it suffered a real collapse due to containment, while the recovery ran out of steam at the end of the summer, the Transport Regulatory Authority said on Tuesday ( ART) in a half-yearly report.

A liberalized sector in 2015

The first months of the year saw a continued development of the sector of operators of freely organized coach services (SLOs, known as “Macron cars”) observed since their liberalization in 2015. Between 2 and 2.5 million passengers have were transported in the first quarter, according to the regulator, which remains vague in order to preserve "business secrecy" in a market now reduced to two national operators, FlixBus and BlaBlaBus (BlaBlaCar).

This figure is "comparable to that of the first quarter of 2019", because the gains made thanks to the railway strike in January were canceled by the cessation of activities on March 17, with the confinement decided to slow the epidemic.

The sector's turnover was between 23 and 29 million euros in the first quarter, against 23.3 million euros a year earlier, according to ART.

Because of the confinement, the "Macron cars" then transported less than 50,000 passengers in the second quarter, for a turnover of less than 1 million euros.

Stagnation since the end of August

Operators waited for demand to recover in June - FlixBus resumed operations on the 18th and BlaBlaBus on the 24th, offering only a reduced network at the end of the quarter, observed the Authority.

Beyond the study period, ART finally observes that "traffic gradually resumed during the third quarter, without returning to its level at the start of the year, and seems to have stagnated or decreased since the end of August".

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  • Tourism

  • Bus

  • Transport

  • Covid 19

  • Emmanuel Macron

  • Coronavirus

  • Economy