A few years after the liberalization of rail, the public company still dominates in France. 440969546/Nicolas ROCHETTE – stock.adobe.com
DECRYPTION – Trenitalia on the TGV and Transdev with the TER are the only ones to challenge the incumbent operator.
All that for this. A few months ago, Xavier Bertrand, the president of the Hauts-de-France region, did not have enough harsh words for the SNCF. He blamed him for the enormous malfunctions of the regional trains on his territory: 140 trains canceled every day out of 1250, not to mention the countless delays. However, to everyone’s surprise, the SNCF will succeed the SNCF at the end of 2024 to operate the TER lines around Amiens. There was indeed a call for tenders. But the region preferred the incumbent rail operator to Transdev. “The SNCF has made a better financial offer and has committed to ensuring that 98.5% of trains are punctual”, justifies Franck Dhersin, vice-president of Hauts-de-France in charge of transport.
Nevertheless, no one had imagined that the opening up to competition, which became effective at the end of 2019 in the TERs and at the end of 2020 in the TGVs, would so often result in the continuation of the monopoly. “Opening up to competition is an opportunity to bring new…
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