IThere aren’t many companies in the CAC 40, the forty largest stocks on the Paris Stock Exchange, that have their headquarters far from the capital. It’s even very simple, there are two: Michelin, in Clermont-Ferrand, and Legrand, in Limoges. And imagine that their current respective number 1 – Florent Menegaux for the tire specialist and Benoît Coquart for the leader in electrical installations – live, by choice, on the land of their group.
Sometimes, their daily life as big bosses requires them to pass a head through the City of Light: go see their Parisian employees, their investors, or even take a plane abroad. Many members of their teams do the same. At Legrand, for example, around ten employees travel to Paris every week for professional reasons.
Until November 20, everything was going more or less well in their lives as commuters. They could make the round trip between Limoges and Paris during the day. Except that their faithful ally, the SNCF, played them a bad trick, and removed their favorite train: that of 7 hours. With this Intercités – number 3624 – the Legrands could reach Paris-Austerlitz station from Limoges in three hours and fifteen minutes.
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Fall back on the 6 o’clock train? More possible for them. It was brought forward half an hour, to 5:34 a.m., for a trip of three hours and forty-five minutes. To hope to arrive around 10 a.m. in Paris, there is an option: leave at 6 a.m., and go through Poitiers. The arrival is announced in Montparnasse at 10:01 a.m. Four hours on the road.
And to think that, until the end of the 1980s, with the train called Capitole, Limoges was 2 h 54 from the capital… And the plane? For the time being and until mid-December, no aircraft takes off or lands in Limoges, because of the works on the runways of the small airport… “It’s not very ecological, nor even very trendy! we are told at Legrand.
“Negative impact” on the activity
It is an understatement to say that at Legrand, the leading private employer in Haute-Vienne (1,000 employees at the Limoges headquarters), we are annoyed by the situation on the rails. Rare thing, its general manager, the discreet Benoît Coquart, split, on November 28, a letter to his SNCF counterpart, Jean-Pierre Farandou, sending copies to local elected officials. The missive leaked.
We can read his “surprise” and his “exasperation” in the face of schedule changes “without prior information and without consultation”. He also criticizes “the glaring lack of infrastructure penalizing the influence of the territory and consequently of Legrand, as well as its attractiveness. These changes “are in addition to the many delays and cancellations” on the Limoges-Paris line, which have a “negative impact” on its activity.
Benoît Coquart does not stop there. He wonders about the interest in locating its teams in Limoges while the group is in the process of redeveloping its premises in the Ile-de-France region. Contacted by Point, the company swears that it wants to stay in its stronghold, where it has been established since 1875, and rather wishes to “shed light on a situation that is constantly deteriorating. »
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According to the SNCF, these measures were “taken to secure the trains during the frost period” and will be applied “only three months, until March 15, 2023”. In concrete terms, until that date, the railway company must run a so-called “scraper” train every day to remove potential frost. This explains, according to her, the abolition of the 7 o’clock train. Due to modernization work on this line at night, the SNCF ensures that it does not have much time flexibility to run this train.
“This is a false controversy, SNCF Voyageurs tells us. Legrand is a major and privileged customer. We speak regularly with them, and we had informed him of the time arrangements. Above all, we understand that they want to launch a debate on the opening up of Limoges and the quality of the service. »
Faced with the controversy, the Haute-Vienne prefecture decided to organize a meeting on Monday, December 12, where the protagonists are invited. The State is in fact the organizing authority for this line, which is considered to be part of regional planning.
Michelin is also unhappy. Last March, the tire specialist’s number 1, Florent Menegaux, published an op-ed, alongside the president of Limagrain, Sébastien Vidal. The managers of these companies based in Clermont-Ferrand also pointed out the problems of regularity, reliability of the trains connecting their city and the capital, as well as the travel times. They wrote in particular: “How can we justify to them (our partners) the maintenance of the headquarters of multinationals in a metropolis so poorly connected to the economic and political capital? The duration of the journeys, offered by the SNCF website, varies between 3 h 11 and 5 h 50.