VSWas Christophe Galtier invited to the presentation of the future TGV this Friday, September 9? In any case, no one saw the PSG coach there. It’s a shame, because he who had joked about an upcoming trip by sand yacht, when he had been criticized for not taking the train, could have noticed that the SNCF bent over backwards to make him prefer the TGV. The fifth version – the “5G” – of the famous car, inaugurated in 1981 by President François Mitterrand, is indeed distinguished by its modularity. In the blink of an eye, a car can go from first class to second or bend to the wishes of a prestigious passenger like the Parisian football club.
This little controversy, the second episode of another on the use of private jets, has the merit of highlighting the subject of competition between modes of transport at a time of energy transition. Today, if the plane is relatively marginal in travel within metropolitan France, the train only constitutes 10% of transport when the car represents nearly three quarters. The ambition displayed by the president of the SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, is to double this “modal share” to bring it to 20%. A considerable bet, contrary to the trend so far in favor of the car and the plane. Not to mention the trust transport of goods by road.
Practicality and price
To achieve this, it is necessary to act on the two decisive criteria in the eyes of customers, practicality and price. On the practical side, the TGV has done the job over long distances, positioning Nantes, Lyon or Bordeaux two hours from Paris. But this considerable effort was built to the detriment of the investment in the network of small lines and the price of the trip. Whether to go to Nantes or Nice, two people in a car are enough to equal the price of a train ticket and, more problematically, the TGV over long distances is more expensive than the plane.
To go to Nice, the first prices are displayed at 50 euros by plane against more than double by train. This is why the new 5G railway sauce will not be faster, but more economical. It will carry 20% more passengers on longer trains that can be transformed as desired. But the bill is painful, 3.5 billion euros to renew a third of the fleet. And it will also be so for all travelers the day when the plane and the car will also pay the real price of the energy transition. It remains to convince Mr. Galtier to lead by example, which is not yet won.