It may one day be possible to take a direct Intercités train between Metz, Nancy and Grenoble via Dijon and Lyon or between Toulouse and Lyon: a government report proposes to create new day and night lines, subsidized by the State .
Among the day trains, the report released on Tuesday by the Mobilettre newsletter proposes to extend Bordeaux-Toulouse-Montpellier-Marseille to Nice, and to create the links Metz-Nancy-Dijon-Lyon-Grenoble and Toulouse-Lyon (in addition to the TGV), as well as the Nantes-Le Mans-Rouen-Amiens-Lille route.
The advantage of the Intercités is that they serve many more cities along the line than the TGV, even if they are slower.
For rolling stock, the report recommends using framework contracts already linking SNCF to manufacturers Alstom and Caf.
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Night trains between Metz, Nancy and Strasbourg
With regard to night trains, the rapporteurs take as a model the success of the Austrian company ÖBB, with the constitution of a real network in a “socio-cultural context favorable to the environment and to action against climate change” .
They propose to organize a bouquet of connections (possibly seasonal) around the Dijon-Marseille, Bordeaux-Marseille, Paris-Toulouse and Tours-Lyon corridors, and joining major foreign cities.
The proposed schemes include, for example, a Metz-Nancy-Strasbourg and Zurich-Geneva service to Avignon then Marseille-Nice, Perpignan-Barcelona and Toulouse-Bordeaux, Quimper-Nantes-Lyon-Geneva, Paris-Brussels-Hamburg-Copenhagen-Malmö or again the rebirth of Paris-Rome.
It would take 600 cars (including 354 intended for domestic links) for an estimated price of 924 million euros, as well as 60 locomotives, for a bill of 1.45 billion, maintenance device included.
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An “obsolete” report according to the ministry
The proposed night network would have a deficit of 26 million euros per year, a figure roughly equal to the current deficit of the two existing night lines “while the service provided to citizens increases considerably, the offer being multiplied by ten”.
“My ambition is around ten night trains in 2030,” Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said in January, by presenting a summary of this report to the Parisian.
“The report published by Mobilettre is an obsolete working version,” reacted its services on Tuesday. “Its final version will be released in a few days.”
The text, provided for by the mobility law and awaited for months, remained blocked in Bercy, according to Mobilettre.
SNCF currently operates the Intercity Paris-Limoges-Toulouse, Paris-Clermont, Nantes-Lyon, Nantes-Bordeaux, Bordeaux-Toulouse-Montpellier-Marseille and Toulouse-Hendaye connections during the day.
There are only two night train lines in France (excluding stops linked to the pandemic or to works), from Paris to Briançon (Hautes-Alpes), and from Paris to Rodez, Cerbère (Pyrénées-Orientales) and Latour-de-Carol (Pyrénées-Orientales). The SNCF is to reopen Paris-Nice on Thursday and Paris-Tarbes in December.
Thello (a subsidiary of Trenitalia) also offers a Paris-Milan-Venice and the Russian railways Paris-Moscow and Nice-Moscow, but these connections are suspended due to coronavirus.
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