Why Emmanuel Macron wants to relaunch the night trains?

• Among his announcements of July 14, the President of the Republic said he wanted to revitalize the circulation of night trains in France.
• Despite a favorable geography and an almost unrivaled network in Europe in the 1970s, France gradually abandoned night trains until there were only two active lines in 2020.
• Relaunching night trains would offer one more alternative to the plane and would be part of a more environmentally friendly journey.

There are more memorable jacket flips than others. Even if nothing will ever equal the flip-flop on masks, from "it is useless you do not bother with that" to "it is compulsory for everyone from August", let us also pay tribute to procrastination of public power on the issue of night trains, suddenly rehabilitated by Emmanuel Macron during his interview of July 14 after being buried without even a funeral oration by François Hollande in 2016. A little thought on this subject for Guillaume Pépy, who must be very happy to have let go of the command of the referral station last fall, he who paid the nostalgics of the hexagonal Orient Express in an interview with France Inter in 2017:

“We are there in the little French contradictions we love. When night trains existed, there were not many people to take them except Friday and Sunday. Since they disappeared, a state decision because it cost the taxpayer 100 million euros a year, it's crazy the number of lovers of night trains, but it's a bit late . They should have been used more before. Why do night trains disappear everywhere? Because the cheap hotels have replaced the berths, and second thing, because the arrival of the TGV means, that when we say that it takes 9 hours to do Paris-Marseille, you say like there may be a TGV which does it in three hours. I myself long for night trains, but we are in a new world. ”

Only two lines still active

The new world would therefore promise to resemble the old, that before the TGV, when the night trains served more than 550 French cities in 1981, as listed by a fan of railway mapping? "There is a unanimous demand to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or what better way to travel long distance with a low carbon impact and without losing too much time than the night train?" Asks Charles Henri-Paquette, member of the association Yes to the night train since 2016. Born of local discontent after the gradual disappearance of historical lines, the collective has gradually transformed into an active force for proposal, author of 'a very rich report on the subject. All the clichés around the night train, in particular its supposed old-fashionedness and its catastrophic performance, are carefully dismantled, official figures in support.

Summer 1981: last summer before the TGV. The network of night trains is still a spider's web. This study makes a full point of the offer this summer: https://t.co/o9NAUOdpAL@ouiautraindnuit @Railcoop_SCIC @JPFarandou @FNAUT_fr @SNCF @GuillaumGontard @CamSls @Ifsttar pic.twitter.com/shdCR1iFXC

In 2019, the Transport Regulatory Authority (ART) denied the words of the CEO of the SNCF: "In 2015, the occupancy rate of night trains (47%) was almost 10 points above the average of Intercités activity. The occupancy rate exceeded 49% in 2016, "the Paris - Nice - Ventimiglia line [deleted since] had the highest occupancy rate for the night service in 2017 (56%)". As for the structurally loss-making nature of an activity which only concerns 3% of all passengers, "it is above all a question of display", according to Charles-Henri Paquette. "Reduced to the number of passengers per kilometer traveled, it is the train which consumes the least public money, especially compared to the considerable infrastructure investments needed by the TGV".

"The night train has no competitor over long distances"

However, you have to start from scratch, in a country that offers the perfect dimensions to reach almost any city from north to south and from east to west, without going through Paris. Of the 67 night trains that still circulated daily in France in the early 2000s, only two lines remain, from Paris to Toulouse-Rodez-Latour-de-Carol, and to Briançon. When they walk. According to La Provence , Paris-Briançon is for example threatened with suppression at the end of the year 2021, following the closure of the line between Valence and Veynes for important works which will last several months.

For the senator of Isère Guillaume Gontard "the night train is a transport offer which has no competitor over long distances. No other offer allows a worker living in the south of France and working in the Paris region to spend an evening with his family before taking his train and arriving at his workplace early in the morning. The inhabitants of the South-West know something about it, they who are most often more than 6 hours from the capital by train.

📺 @EmmanuelMacron “We are going to re-develop rail freight. Massively. We are going to re-develop the night trains. There too. We are going to re-develop the small train lines. Because all this saves money and reduces CO2 emissions »pic.twitter.com/mzQ9V30JNJ

Marie-Pierre Vieu, former communist MEP very committed to this subject in Brussels, came up against this reality head on when the night train connecting Paris to Tarbes was removed: "There have been compensations, we are put a TGV very early in the morning, but it arrives at 10 a.m. while the night train made you arrive at Austerlitz at 7 a.m. You were operational for an appointment at 9 a.m. It was also a means of decompartmentalization. We feel that we could be a rural and ecological alternative allowing us to welcome new populations when in reality we are less and less connected to the national space ”.

If not by air, despite a certain ecological sense. The long pilgrimages by train to Lourdes were thus replaced by the charter ball from all over Europe. “There is an alternative to the sky to build, otherwise we will not be able to do well on the carbon footprint. Even more in the current state of mind, which postulates that we have to rest things, consume less, live slower, the question of the night train will come up again ”.

Outdated equipment and a service to rethink

It already arises at European level, where the emergence of the "flygskam", the shame of flying, has allowed a fundamental movement in favor of the rebirth of a continental network of night trains, around parliamentary discussions from all sides. In Austria, the German Deutsche Bahn had preferred to stop the charges, but the national operator ÖBB put their hands in the sludge to redo the night train a must borrowed each year by 1.4 million passengers. An encouraging example for the rest of the EU, provided that the means are made available. However, the SNCF gradually let its night train network die with the complicity of the State. In 2015, the Court of Auditors issued a severe report on the condition of the trains, at the time conditioning the maintenance of the service of the six night lines to the renovation of 300 out-of-age cars, "despite their recognized robustness" .

Most cities in the south of France are more than 5 hours by TGV from Paris, a day lost in transport. - Screenshot / Yes to the night train

This concretely means that the rare French night trains only offer reclining seats or sleeping compartments with spartan comfort, without premium offer, without shower, even collective, without wifi, obviously, and without catering service most time, which does not make you want, it must be said. “We do not know when the night trains will be able to recirculate in France in a significant way, worries Charles-Henri Paquette. It would seem that the SNCF hastened to send the material to the scrapyard, there are almost no more sleeping cars. However, as there has been a redeployment of night trains in Europe, there is a tension even in the rental ”.

The association Yes to the night train has thus calculated that building a fleet of night trains including 750 new or renovated cars for 15 national lines and co-financing for 15 intra-European lines would cost around 1.5 billion euros.

"We have a lot of ambition for night trains"

This is much more than what Elisabeth Borne, the former minister for the ecological transition, had promised in 2018, when the State had finally renewed its convention with the SNCF to extend the existence of the last two night lines. On this point, the art of "at the same time" by Emmanuel Macron struck again, even before the concept was born. Night trains, which the President of the Republic now wants to reinstall in the railway landscape, had been replaced in practice by the famous low-cost buses, promoted by the one who was then only Minister of the Economy.

Yes, night trains have a future! I am announcing that the State is committed to their sustainability:

État The State-SNCF agreement, which was to end in 2020, will be renewed.

✅ The State will invest more than 30M € to renovate night trains: berths, toilets, sockets, WiFi ... https://t.co/jGJxLdBVDL

But Secretary of State for Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari assured him even before the intervention of the Head of State: "We have a lot of ambition for night trains in France and in the discussions I have been able to having with the President of the Republic, I share that with him, we are going in the weeks, in the months to come, to have a policy of promotion and revitalization of night trains ”. There is work.

Politics

Interview of July 14: What should be retained from Emmanuel Macron's announcements?

Society

Coronavirus: "A breath of fresh air to see the planes fly", Orly is preparing to reopen at least in (almost) general relief

• Planet