For a transport company, the immobility of the SNCF (national society for railroads) is striking.
The commercial brochure is seductive: trains among the fastest in the world, reliable schedules, very affordable fares.
Paradoxically, the service provided is sometimes deplorable.
On March 7, 2023, 80% of TER and TGV trains were cancelled. The trains, 1 Intercity and 1 TGV that I was planning to take to go to Paris with a reduced carbon impact, were also cancelled every day until the day of my departure. So I booked a blablabus three days before. It was also cancelled!
It was finally a Flixbus that saved me. Taken at the last moment, it cost four times the price of the train and imposed a 12 hour wait in Roissy airport. But I didn’t see the trip go by, at night. It is a means of transport that I will take again with pleasure.
The protest against the pension reform had a huge impact.
How is the suppression of the trains linked to the retirement rules? By what tortuous reasoning can one think that blocking fellow citizens will improve one’s own future?
This is not the issue at hand. It is obvious that everyone wants to have the choice to retire earlier. It’s the form that’s dumb.
Several factors favor this cult of aggressive protest. The first is the loss of legitimacy, and therefore of power, of the unions in France. Some have accepted to continue the discussion by making more compromises. Unfortunately, others have chosen violent action. The latter are losing more and more their place in the public debate. To the point of thinking about their administrative dissolution. This alone will not solve the problem. On the contrary, it will aggravate it by depriving people who have become accustomed to typing before speaking of the problem. We need to look first at complementary measures, education, animation and coercion, to reintegrate them as best we can into society.
A second factor that contributes to the poor quality of service is the company’s public monopoly situation. The state delegates too much power to a single organization. Us, as users were therefore totally dependent on this service. However, things are changing rapidly with the effective competition from road transport(bus and carpooling). The decline in popularity of rail transport would waste the heavy investment in track construction and maintenance. A privatization and a real competition, as it has been done successfully in the Telecom sector, can reduce the immobility of the SNCF.
Digitization, which is subcontracted, is another way to reduce the power that some people have. Thus, the protests were abusing the ticketing system. The current online services are more reliable. Also, the management of trains should be able to benefit from the lessons learned from the automatic piloting of cars, planes and subways (Meteor, Val).