By Victor Massias
Published on
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Elodie tastes the joys of back and forth Paris–Le Havre, for three months. She is already overwhelmed by the adventures she is going through, between blocked trains and technical issues. “Every week, I have a problem,” she breathes. But these concerns are not the only ones encountered by travelers.
Karine Maubé Courteaud, President of theAdurn (Association for the defense of Normandy rail users), points out, “the reduction of the nominal transport plan decided by the Region for economic reasons. She denounces “fewer trains” and “three-hour service holes every day, especially at Oissel, Gaillon and Vernon“. “In this period, it is a scandal to remove trains supports Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, the mayor of Rouen.
18 additional trains… finally withdrawn
“The Region took over the competence on 1is January 2020 on former Intercités going to Paris, answers Jean-Baptiste Gastinne, vice-president of the Normandy Region. In order to prepare, we said to ourselves that we were going to strengthen the offer. We had planned to add 18 additional trains from 1is January 2020. However, we have never been able to maintain them in a stable and sustainable manner. Since the Covid crisis, there have been times when they have been put on and then taken off. At the end of these two years, the decision we have just taken is to delay their deployment, because we don’t have enough passengers on our trains. It is therefore the additional offer that is deleted, and not the basic offer. A story of supply and demand, in short. Since the wagons, during the day, from Monday to Thursday, are not full enough, they disappear while waiting for the demand to increase.
“We manage public money and we have the concern of not running trains almost empty, continues Jean-Baptiste Gastinne. If there were a very good surprise with the return of professional customers during the week, or if the rise in fuel prices had such an impact that people would turn to the train, we would be able to redeploy this offer, since that’s what we wanted to do. »
“A domino effect”
For Karine Maubé Courteaud, this decision creates “a domino effect. Inevitably, when the 10 a.m. train is cancelled, people switch to the 9 a.m. train. Monday April 4, for example, you could not buy tickets for the 7:59 train from Le Havre, no seats were available. For subscribers, there was still car 5 in free placement. The next train was almost two hours later, if you wanted a direct. »
For or against systematic booking?
The Region has taken a new direction regarding seating and wishes to further develop it: systematic reservation. It is the guarantee of having a seat. For some time, she has been discussing with user associations, which are rather reluctant to this idea. “That’s what will perhaps prevent people from traveling standing up,” announces Jean-Baptiste Gastinne. The system has also been set up in Paris-Caen-Cherbourg “and it works very well, the travelers are satisfied”, assures the vice-president of the region.
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According to the Region, this is a very occasional train problem, on which it is working with the SNCF. The railway company sometimes having difficulty making two available instead of just one. “As off-peak trains will not run, we will follow this closely”, assures Jean-Baptiste Gastinne.
But for the Adurn, the supply of additional trains is now necessary, since “we can see that attendance has resumed”. A statement with which the Region does not agree. According to its figures, in 2021, the counts carried out indicated a decrease in attendance of 24% compared to 2019. For 2022, it forecasts an improvement, but not to return to the levels of the last year before the arrival of the Covid: “ So there is room on the trains. “Except that the schedules weren’t the same, we didn’t have such large service holes,” continues Karine Maubé Courteaud. We are asking for increased vigilance on the return of people to the trains. »
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