Trainline, an independent European application for the sale of train and bus tickets, more fluid than SNCF Connect, commissioned a survey from Opinion Way on the perception of the French about the opening up of passenger rail transport to competition, both both national and regional.
Since the first survey, carried out in August 2022, Trenitalia has arrived on the Paris-Lyon-Milan line and the Spanish Renfe is expected next month on Madrid-Barcelona-Marseille and Barcelona-Lyon.
These figures are close to those of Rome-Milan where Italo faces the incumbent operator Trenitalia. Traffic has doubled there at the same time as fares have fallen by 40%. The plane’s market share fell from 50% to 17% and that of the car from 14% to 8%.
During a round table bringing together operators (Le Train, Transdev), regions (Pays de Loire, Grand Est), user associations and the Transport Regulatory Authority, it appeared that the conditions for opening competition were slow to come together. “The ecosystem is not ready for the arrival of new players”, observes Transdev, which notes the lack of usable data provided by SNCF Réseau. This does not allow, among other things, to design its maintenance centers.
How will the passenger be treated? The answer remains unclear and it requires discussions at European level to define the rules applicable to a single ticket (train, bus) multimodal. This will also be sorely lacking during the Olympic Games in 2024. The DB in Germany, with thirty years of openness to competition, knows how to deal with the passenger in the event of delay: at a dedicated counter at the station of arrival, the traveler finds, prepared, a new reservation, a hotel and restaurant voucher. Where you have to palaver weeks in France to be reimbursed. This may be purely impossible in the case, for example, of a Fontainebleau-Lyon, TER TGV trip via the same Paris station. If the regional train is faulty, you have to take the next TGV and pay (full price) for a new ticket. One can imagine what could be the complexity of such an action with multiple operators.