Be careful if you plan to take the train this Tuesday. At the call of the unions, a new mobilization day against the pension reform and the postponement of the legal age of departure is scheduled for January 31 and will largely disrupt traffic on the rails. After a movement widely followed on January 19, with few TGVs and no Intercités to traffic, the forecasts have just fallen for this Tuesday, January 31. The Parisian takes stock.
One in three TGV maintained
SNCF plans to maintain only one out of three TGVs (InOui and OUIGO). On the northern axis, there will be 2/5 InOui, 1/2 for the eastern axis, 1/4 on the Atlantic axis and 1/2 for journeys to and from the southeast. Two out of five OUIGOs will circulate. For travel between regions, the SNCF anticipates 1/3 TGV.
Only two out of ten TERs
Intercités traffic will be very severely degraded with no traffic planned, except for a round trip for the Paris-Clermont, Paris-Limoges-Toulouse and Bordeaux-Marseille lines. The Intercités will not run overnight from Monday to Tuesday but also from Tuesday to Wednesday. Only two out of ten TERs will run, the SNCF inviting users to find out about the SNCF application and the TER site.
For international trains, if the Eurostar and the Thalys should experience almost normal traffic, it will be severely disrupted for Lyria trains and with 1/4 train for other links abroad. It will also be complicated in Île-de-France with 1/3 train for RER A and B and lines H and U of the Transilien. Worse still on line K with one in four trains.
Or on the rest of the network (RER C, D and E as well as lines J, L, N, P and R) with one train out of 10! For RER C, no traffic between Invalides and Pontoise/Saint-Quentin en Yvelines/Versailles Rive Gauche. For the RER D: interconnection suspended between Châtelet and Gare de Lyon, no trains between Châtelet and Gare de Lyon. For line R: no traffic between Melun and Montereau via Héricy. In the metro too, the RATP communicated great disturbances with a large number of rows only open at peak times and with reduced service. Sometimes not even their full length.
More than 7,000 amendments tabled
Transport Minister Clément Beaune had already warned this Sunday that a “difficult or even very difficult day” was announced on Tuesday. “So all those who can organize themselves to telecommute, to postpone a trip, it’s better” because “there will be strong disruptions”, he assured.
The pension reform bill must be examined in committee at the National Assembly from this Monday until February 17. More than 7,000 amendments have been tabled, mainly by the left, which intends to prolong the debates, while the right seeks to raise the stakes, aware that its votes will be crucial to adopt the reform. The government must also deal with its own majority, where many are calling for improvements and some are reluctant to vote for the text.
But no question of flinching on the side of the executive. Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne insisted this Sunday on the fact that the postponement of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 was “no longer negotiable” from now on. For his part, Bruno Le Maire called on the parties of the majority “to unite” around the government, in favor of reform. “When you belong to a majority, you support the proposals that were part of the presidential project,” the Minister of Economy and Finance told the JDD.