the essentials Thursday February 29, the railway company Kevin Speed signed an agreement with SNCF Réseau to run its trains by 2028. An ambitious project for this new competitor of the SNCF which intends to offer another model.
A new train is arriving at the station for 2028. The Kevin Speed company will compete with SNCF with its Ilisto service, which will offer trains at “affordable” prices to serve large cities like Lille, Strasbourg or Lyon, but also intermediate stations . This Thursday, February 29, the new company signed an agreement with SNCF Résau for ten years, when everything is in place.
Kevin Speed, it is a company founded in 2021 by Laurent Fourtune, an expert in public transport and a worker at RATP for more than eight years. Its slogan: “high speed for everyone, every day”. Kevin Speed wants to better serve the regions with trains halfway between the TGV and the Intercité, in order to offer “rapid and numerous rotations”.
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No need for reservations anymore
The director says that “the more we travel, the less we pay. With the attack prices we have planned, our trains will be full.” Enough to reassure investors. As for the customer, he “goes by tapping with his card or his phone, and we are billed according to the trips made”. End of reservations therefore, and promises of prices ranging from 3 to 5 euros per 100 km during off-peak times.
According to this new competitor of the SNCF, this model is intended to be more adapted to the current lifestyle and the emergence of teleworking. “With the practice of teleworking and the desire to live far from very large cities, “commuting” is developing. Commuting is the act of traveling frequently and freely to connect one’s place(s) of life and work. But the train or coach offering is poorly adapted (not enough frequency, subscriptions much too expensive) and limits these new lifestyles to those who can afford them,” explains the company.
A project that will take time
An attractive project which convinced the SNCF and the Minister of Transport, Patrice Vergriete, present at the signing of the contract which authorizes the company to operate on French railway lines. Kevin Speed must nevertheless obtain approval from the Transport Regulatory Authority (ART) and will have to purchase new trains from Alstom.
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However, the train manufacturer has a full order book and delivering this type of model may take time. Since it takes around four years to manufacture trainsets, the entry into service date announced by Kevin Speed seems difficult to achieve.
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On the financing side, the company wants to raise significant funds, since a project of this magnitude is likely to be expensive. If the company announced that it had won the sum of 4 million euros last summer, its arrival at the station risked being delayed.
2024-03-03 23:46:14
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