To quote Isabelle Pierre’s famous song, one could classically describe the French summer as follows: “The weather is good, the sky is blue, the train fares are sky-high”. Because each time the beautiful season comes to the fore, the problem resurfaces: the desire to bury one’s feet in the sand in Marseille, Biarritz or Nice is confronted with prohibitive prices from the French rail. A song brought up to date with the announcement a few days ago, by the SNCF, of an increase in the ceiling of its Advantage card. But what if this tune we’ve been humming for so long was partly wrong? In other words: are we being too unfair in saying that “the train is really very expensive”? (Yes, we go far, but promised, this article was not sponsored by the SNCF).
Despite prices deemed “prohibitive”, the blue, white, red way train piles up successes and full wagons. After more than 23 million passengers on the main SNCF lines in the summer of 2022, the rail group is expecting a new record season in the coming weeks.
Prices cheaper than most European neighbors
We are going to avoid the cliché about the grumpy Frenchman, but Patricia Perennes, an economist specializing in rail transport, recognizes a “gap between speeches and deeds of sale”. Before we get out the killer sentence: “It’s wrong to say that the train is too expensive in France. A few comparisons to illustrate the point. Already on the side of our European neighbors, where rail is not really more profitable. According data from the Transport Regulatory Authority for 2021, France has the lowest fares with Spain for freely organized trains (i.e. without state subsidy). Count the TGV, Ouigo, Lyria, Eurostar and Thalys… The train costs “only” 9 euros per 100 kilometers on average.
Admittedly, this place is obtained thanks to the discounted prices of the Ouigo, which offer a lower quality of service – and often a choice of stations quite far from the city centers. But even without taking these Ouigos into account, high-speed trains in France are at 10.80 euros per 100 kilometers, lower than Germany (11 euros), Italy (12), Great Britain (18), Belgium (23) and the champion in all categories, the Netherlands (32 euros per 100 kilometers!). Same observation for the train agreed by the regions, where France is one of the least expensive European countries with 7 euros per 100 kilometers, against 17 for Great Britain, 16 for the Netherlands and 11 for Germany. “There is a lack of knowledge of the price of trains abroad, but it is enough to go to England or Germany to see them much more expensive than here”, judges the specialist.
“People forget that long distance journeys are expensive”
Yves Crozet, an economist specializing in transport, adds a layer: no, the prices for such long distances are not so high. Let’s imagine that we want to go from Paris to Biarritz, Perpignan or Bordeaux next Saturday. Pouf, like that, on a whim, right at the July/August intersection. All without a discount card. In short, absolutely everything you should not do to get a cheap ticket. Verdict: the direct to Bordeaux remains less expensive than a car trip for a single person (79 euros against 123 euros, with petrol and tolls), and two hours less travel time.
Ditto for going to Perpignan (96 euros by train against 159 by car, for three hours less). And unsurprisingly, the same for Biarritz (130 euros against 155, with three hours less travel time). We take the calculator: “With subscription, the train is around 3 cents per kilometer for TER, subsidized by the regions, and 10 cents for TGV. Gasoline alone, without the toll, is 10 cents per kilometer,” maintains the economist. “When it comes to the train, people forget the obvious: long-distance journeys are expensive. »
The plane, unfair competition
So why are we so demanding? “There is a general confusion – or an expectation – that the train would be a public service, which is not the case”, recalls Patrica Perennes. “The SNCF is a private group, whose TGVs are not subsidized, and which must be profitable. We could even estimate that given the fill rate of its trains, it could further increase its prices…”
But the real bias in this judgment seems to be the plane. Would the train seem so expensive to us if there hadn’t been, in comparison, Paris-Venice or Marseille-Budapest at 50 euros? “The problem is that we want the train to be cheaper than the plane for ecological reasons. But it has no economic basis, ”says Yves Crozet. Even taxing kerosene, flying requires much less infrastructure than riding on the rails… and much shorter travel times, so fewer hours of wages for all pilots, stewards…
The train, not so whew anyway
But that was before, because two factors could put a serious brake on this bias. First, the end or reduction of certain domestic airlines in France, which de facto eliminates a lot of painful comparisons for the train. Second, the prices of planes are soaring, with an average increase of 24% in one year, according to a report by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, against an 8% increase for trains, according to INSEE. And everything indicates that flight prices should continue to rise sharply in the years to come.
From there to exempting the train from all blame? “We cannot deny that the French find the train too expensive, and that the prices are not very affordable”, points out Arnaud De Blauwe, editor-in-chief of the UFC Que-Choisir. The exceptional filling rate of the wagons this summer cannot be a sufficient argument according to him: “After the Covid-19 crisis, there is a sanctification of holidays and the French are making decisions in this direction. This does not mean that it is not a huge cost, or that the train is accessible for everyone. »
“For families, even with discount cards, the train can be extremely expensive,” also acknowledges Patricia Perennes. What to imagine additional reductions? “There is no point in lowering the price of the train for everyone. The SNCF must be profitable, and it raises the price of the lines with big success to lower the price of the less popular ways. It is a viable model, especially since the TGVs mainly connect very large cities, therefore with wealthy populations who can generally afford the tickets. But specific help would be welcome”.