Rail transport: Trenitalia arrives on French lines

An Italian “Red Arrow” train at Milan station (illustrative image).

AFP - GIUSEPPE CACACE

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

The Italian public company Trenitalia arrives on the French network from this Saturday December 18, it is the consequence of the end of the monopoly of the internal transport of the SNCF.

Its high-speed trains will run between Paris and Lyon, a line until now provided by the TGV of the French national company.

And in the east of the country too, the train is opening up to competition.

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Trenitalia is the first rail operator to compete with SNCF on its TGV market in France.

Its

train 

, the “Red Arrow”, will connect, with two daily round trips, Paris to Milan via Lyon and Turin.

Trenitalia will therefore run twice a day on the Paris - Lyon axis, the most profitable of the SNCF, which however retains its twenty-four daily departures.

Call price

The Italian company announces attractive prices from 23 euros in "standard comfort" which corresponds to the second class, it is more than a ticket at 16 euros on the Ouigo and from 29 euros in "business comfort" the equivalent of the first class, for a Paris - Milan.

But these announced prices are call prices, because, like the SNCF, Trenitalia changes its prices according to the filling of its trains.

Only the ten - very wide - reclining leather armchairs in the Executive Class are sold at the single price of 139 euros for a Paris - Lyon and 165 euros for a Paris - Milan.

Opening up to competition in the East too

And this is only the beginning: the French Grand Est region will liberate - within three years - hundreds of kilometers of cross-border lines with Germany. During its plenary videoconference meeting, the Regional Council voted to initiate the procedure for the operation of seven links representing a total of 525 kilometers from Metz, Strasbourg and Mulhouse to the German border towns of Trier, Saarbrücken, Neustadt, Karlsruhe, Offenburg and Müllheim, cities located in the regional states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Saar and Baden-Württemberg.

The Regional Council plans to start operations on December 8, 2024, after the notice of the call for competition that it will publish at the end of this month, jointly with the three

German

, with a view to designating the mid-award winners. 2023.

The fifteen-year contract is divided into two lots, one from Metz, in Lorraine, and the other from Alsace.

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