It is once again possible to travel by rail from Paris to Aurillac under the gaze of the Moon. Abolished twenty years ago, the night line has been back since Sunday evening, with a first train leaving from Austerlitz station in the presence of Transport Minister Clément Beaune and SNCF officials.
The intercity train, partly made up of berths, left at 7:27 p.m., heading towards Aurillac, which it should reach this Monday at 7:15 a.m., after stops among others in Châteauroux, Limoges, Brive… This inauguration takes place the day before that of Paris-Berlin, also reinstalled in a context of return to favor of this nocturnal mode of transport, abandoned in the 2010s.
“Public service lines”
It’s “a big acceleration”, commented Clément Beaune, while France is aiming for 10 night lines by the end of the decade, according to a plan launched in 2021.
For this Paris-Aurillac, old trains were renovated to accommodate berths. “We will both continue the renovations and order new trains at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025,” explained the minister, for a budget of 150 million euros devoted in total to this project to revive night trains. This also includes facilities such as showers at the end of the platform. For the Paris-Aurillac line, “as with all lines that do not break even, we assume that they are public service lines, and we subsidize their operation: a line like Paris-Aurillac is between 3 and 4 million euros per year in state subsidies.”
Jean Castex praises night trains
Even more than the night train, Clément Beaune underlined the importance of intercity trains, “these train lines which have been neglected, what I sometimes call the somewhat Yellow Vest trains, that is to say of people who have the feeling that we have only thought about TGVs and not intercity regional trains.”
Jean Castex, the former Prime Minister who had promised the return of this line to Cantal, was there on Sunday evening to see the train leave and note “that it is happening!” “. The night train “I believe in it,” he added. “This ticks the sustainable transport box and the rurality box, aspects that match my DNA.”
At this stage three weekly Paris-Aurillac night trips are offered by the SNCF, in both directions and at the end of the week. The first sales showed a occupancy rate of 65%, according to Clément Beaune.