It’s the France that gets up early and arrives late, the France of stationary trains. On the blue screens of SNCF stations in Hauts-de-France, the second largest rail region in the country (by number of daily passengers), are displayed regional express trains (TER) which no longer exist because they have been cancelled, the day before or the same day, for lack of drivers, controllers or equipment. “Deleted” ; “Deleted” ; “Deleted”.
In the stations of Amiens, Arras, Béthune (Pas-de-Calais), Beauvais, Creil (Oise), Lille or Hazebrouck (Nord), which have become halls of lost steps, flying hours and angry phone calls to prevent delays, the scene is repeated, morning, noon and evening, in a dosage that exhausts the social body and shows how fragile the public service of the train, that of the small lines and daily journeys, is.
“Progress is only valid if it is shared by all”promised a slogan of the National Railway Company at the end of the XXe century, at the time when it shone by betting all its communication and its funds on the TGV.
Over the first eight months of the year, 11,241 TERs were canceled at the last moment in Hauts-de-France, according to data collected by The world, compared to 7,385 over the same period in 2021 and 4,797 in 2019, before Covid-19. A 134% increase, in three years, in the number of cancellations: from Amiens to Paris, capable of carrying a thousand passengers for each trip; Creil-Paris, full of housekeepers responsible for cleaning the premises of large Parisian companies; Valenciennes-Lille stuffed with high school students; Creil-Beauvais with employees and workers paid at minimum wage; Lens-Arras; of Calais-Lille.
France likes to look at itself in the mirror of the TGV or the Airbus. But his face is also drawn on the blue screens of the TER. To borrow these lines, in a region where the far right obtains very high scores, is to hear a flood of criticism, between resignation and cold anger, a feeling of relegation and mistreatment, in the face of cancellations, delays and the lack of transparency.
Romée Gobert, a 63-year-old psychologist, kindly offers us the seat next to her in the “7 h 04 Paris-Amiens”, aboard a train built in the mid-1970s: “You go to work, you are not sure to return homeshe summarizes. You can never know what time you arrive somewhere again. I am desperate because, with global warming, we are walking backwards. »
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