The president of the Grand Est Regional Council, Jean Rottner, denounces the “many dysfunctions” of the service.
The President of the Grand Est Regional Council, Jean Rottner (LR), announced on Friday his intention to suspend payments to SNCF for the operation of the TER network, highlighting the “malfunctions” of service.
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“We will stop paying, waiting for the system to return to normal”he declared during a meeting of the permanent committee of the Regional Council. “We have 14 fewer trains due to asbestos, we have a load increase that does not correspond to what was planned, an information system that malfunctions. We have a service provider, the SNCF, which we pay, and today the service provided in exchange is not up to par”, he hammered. The vice-president in charge of transport, David Valence, reported a “accumulation of malfunctions since September”and denounced “the inadequacy of the SNCF to crisis management”.
Alerts from February
At the end of February, the Federation of Transport Users of the Grand Est had already alerted on travel conditions “increasingly difficult”deploring schedule changes and train cancellations “too many”. Contacted by AFP, the management of TER Grand Est did not comment.
In December, the Hauts-de-France region, chaired by Xavier Bertrand (LR), also announced that it was suspending its payments to SNCF, due to “many malfunctions”. The region acted on March 17 a “improvement” of the service and resumed its payments.