Good news for regulars of the TGV between Paris and Nantes. By next year, some 600,000 seats will be added to trains. For this ever more popular journey, SNCF Voyageurs has indeed chosen to only use new generation Océane trainsets, more modern and above all larger.
“They have the highest capacity, with 556 seats,” explains Franck Dubourdieu, director of the TGV Atlantique axis. From December 15, this will make it possible to board 10% more passengers, in the best equipment. » In addition to these 300,000 added seats, many trains will even be doubled, which will save an additional 300,000.
For the rest, the travel conditions for these 19 daily round trips should not change. Because due to numerous “constraints”, the frequency already considered “very high” will not be improved, nor the travel time, today often well over two hours (only two trains are direct per day) but “equivalent to large metropolises. It must be said that building a high-speed line (LGV) across the entire Nantes-Paris link would cost several billion euros.
Improve maintenance
“The real issue for developing the quality of service is adding capacity, which is what we are doing,” believes Franck Dubourdieu. It will also be about improving the wifi, so that we can offer a real mobile office. Finally, and this is work with SNCF Réseau, we will need even better secure tracks, in particular to avoid game collisions. »
The objective of TGV Atlantique today is to “keep the trains running as much as possible”. To do this, SNCF plans to open a new maintenance center under the Cheviré bridge in Nantes by 2028, a project which will require several tens of thousands of euros. Today, it is in Paris, at Montparnasse station, that the hundred TGV trains are overhauled and repaired.