The primeur train, which connects the Saint-Charles platform in Perpignan to the Rungis market of national interest, has not been running since March 7 “due to social movements” indicated Fret SNCF. Faced with the impossibility of enforcing the contract, Primever, which rents wagons to Fret SNCF until the end of 2024, had requested the suspension of the service. The company then turned to road transport.
The CGT Federation of Railway Workers protested against the reasons given by the railway group to justify the suspension of the train. “The massive strike in progress, with regard to the pension reform, cannot serve as a pretext for the suspension of this circulation. Also, the CGT Federation of Railway Workers is determined to engage in new battles to safeguard Perpignan-Rungis”.
A train erected as a symbol of decarbonization
The situation seems to have found a favorable outcome. The SNCF group announced that it had “worked on exceptional means to guarantee its recovery from May 2”. This freight train is often erected as a symbol of decarbonization and modal shift. Threatened with disappearance, the line had been closed in the summer of 2019 due to the obsolescence of the rolling stock. Before being reopened in October 2021 after the refurbishment of twelve wagons, at the rate of five weekly connections from November to July.
It must be modernized from 2025 in order to become one of the three rail motorways, in particular by boarding trucks on the trains, with the Bayonne-Cherbourg and Sète-Calais links. Former Prime Minister Jean Castex made the announcement on July 27, 2020.
Saint-Charles is the leading marketing, transport and logistics platform for fruit and vegetables in Europe. Products from the fertile Roussillon plain, but also from Morocco and part of Spain, pass through here.