Connecting the everyday user experience with the big picture politics of French railways

There is currently an argument in France about the future of the national railway operator SNCF that goes roughly like this: better keep the whole thing together, because then some smaller places that are not profitably served can still have their trains. If we let private companies cherry pick the profitable lines and that will not be the case, and passengers will suffer. A précis of this sort of discussion can be found in articles like this one in Le Parisien.

With my experience of rail, Europe wide, I have never really agreed with this sort of way of arguing. But let us, for the sake of the rest of this blog post, assume it is true – for the good of the future of French railways, a big, unified SNCF is better for France. And that would be better for passengers.

Then to the story that prompted this post.

A friend of mine posted in a messenger group this morning about his experience on a delayed TGV from Avignon TGV heading north through Lyon.

A passenger sat next to my friend had a SNCF TGV ticket Avignon TGV – Lyon Part Dieu, and a SNCF TER ticket Lyon Part Dieu – Mâcon-Ville, but due to the TGV delay would miss their connection onto the TER regional train in Lyon, and asked the TGV train manager whether, as a result, they could simply stay on the TGV that also stops at Mâcon-Ville*, and for that 47 minutes of extra trip sit in the bar carriage and have a coffee.

The SNCF train manager’s reaction was no, that would not be possible “because the other train is operated by another company” (it isn’t – they’re both SNCF Voyageurs – but that even being given as the rationale is interesting) and it cannot be done as the TGV the passenger is on is already full, and that if the passenger wanted to do that it would cost them €76.

Look at it this way. The passenger on the Avignon – Lyon TGV is already inconvenienced. Their train is late. The train manager could repair the issue – by letting the passenger stay on in the bar carriage. And the passenger would feel a bit better. Or the train manager could do as they did, and double down – make the problem seem like it was the passenger’s fault and not offer the passenger a solution.

And please do not try to tell me there is any safety or security problem here. Lyon Part Dieu – Mâcon-Ville is an old 160km/h line, with a max axle load of 22.5 tonnes (unlike French high speed lines that have a limit of 17 tonnes). So a few extra passengers on a TGV is no problem at all.

It is of course possible that train managers do not have the power to make a decision like this – to help a passenger with this sort of conundrum. So could be that it is the rule that is wrong, rather than the train manager’s attitude being wrong.

But in the end this all adds up to the same thing for the passenger.

SNCF in situations like this gives a passenger hostile impression. It does not want to help a passenger get to their destination. And these passengers, in the end, are voters. And when the future of SNCF becomes a political hot topic, those voters are going to go “hang on, the times I have needed it to work as a passenger friendly joined up company it did not, so why should I even care if it is still one firm – because for my sake it already does not work”

So SNCF, if it wants to save itself, has to start at the bottom. It has to start with its customers, the passengers. Make them feel welcome. Give them a good case as to why the status quo is better than whatever liberalised future might be around the corner. Give them carrots, in other words.

Instead all SNCF does is paint a dark picture of the future, to which passengers can rightly say, well, hey ho, the status quo does not work for us currently, can we really imagine it would all be that much worse? SNCF’s current attitude is hastening its own demise.

* – I have no idea why the passenger did not simply book all the way to Macon-Ville in the first place, but let’s not get into that here.

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