The return of the Bordeaux-Lyon train line has been postponed for six months to December 2022, its operator Railcoop said on Friday. “The Bordeaux-Lyon line will therefore be launched for the 2023 annual service, ie December 11, 2022,” the railway cooperative indicated in an email to its 10,000 members. The “main” reason for this postponement “is that the infrastructure manager – SNCF Réseau – is not able to provide us with quality train paths (traffic slots, editor’s note) despite discussions on this subject since. more than eighteen months ”, accuses Railcoop.
The SNCF subsidiary, which takes care of the rail network, replied Friday evening that the train path allocation process was “not finished” but that it “took note” of the postponement of RailCoop. This small company based in Figeac (Lot) intended to run two round trips per day from June 26 between Bordeaux, Périgueux, Limoges, Montluçon, Roanne and Lyon, in about seven and a half hours, resuscitating a transverse link abandoned in 2014.
“Of all the traffic requests made, only 55% were filled by SNCF Réseau, on condition, however, that we finance the opening of positions (although deemed to be open when the service was built with SNCF Réseau, etc.)”, Railcoop explained. Railcoop has received “proposals”, but they only partially respond to requests, had previously explained its general manager Nicolas Debaisieux.
SNCF Réseau replied that when a request could not be successful, the company undertook to provide an “alternative proposal”, and that these exchanges were carried out under the control of the regulatory authority. Beyond Bordeaux-Lyon, Railcoop is working on eight other low-speed cross-links for the end of 2022, such as Toulouse-Limoges-Poitiers-Le Mans to Caen or Rennes-Saint-Brieuc, and Thionville-Metz-Nancy- Dijon to Grenoble or Lyon-Saint-Etienne. The cooperative must make its first turns with freight trains from November 16.