The offer was tempting. The first RER outside Ile-de-France, the European Metropolitan Express Network (Reme), launched on December 11 in Strasbourg, was to bring happiness and serenity to SNCF users. And above all, give them confidence with a real alternative to the car. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, the “big shock of mobility” promised by the communities with the forecast of 800 additional trains per week and a timing with small onions, it is above all a shock for the nerves of very many users. Faced with cascading delays or those watching from the platform, trains passing but not stopping, anger growls.
Also, a meeting on Tuesday, bringing around the table the Grand-Est region, the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg and the SNCF, aimed to review the problems encountered and the search for “concrete and forthcoming solutions”, explains Thibaud Philipps, vice-president of the Region in charge of transport. A Region which also expected this Tuesday a speech of truth, to know “the capacity or not of the SNCF to meet the deadlines We have the impression of not having the service which was expected and which promised by the SNCF”. For its part, the Sncf would have explained during this meeting according to the elected official, problems of organization and anticipation, essentially due to the technical complexity of this express network, which, let us remember, is a project pilot.
“Rebuilding trust with users”
A meeting “to restore confidence”, as a first response also to this chaotic departure from Reme and to the disgruntled travelers who are mobilizing and expressing their anger, in particular on a dedicated Facebook page. Page on which they gather testimonials, complaints, information and hopes. Mobilization also via a petition, which in two weeks has already obtained more than 2,500 signatures. This denounces a situation which has deteriorated since the commissioning of the Reme or even points to malfunctions “since the start of the school year in September 2022 on certain lines and on all lines since November”. Angry users who demand a “partial or total refund of subscriptions for the last three months” but also that the timing of the trains be “re-studied”, even that “the Reme be possibly suspended, the time to bring together the human and technical means to may it be a real success”.
Faced with this sling, the Region has already obtained last Thursday from the SNCF to support 50% of the price of subscriptions for the next three months and the sale for occasional travelers of 500,000 tickets at low prices from February to the end of April. For François Giordani, president of the Federation of Transport User Associations (Fnaut) Grand-Est, this compensation proposal “unfortunately called commercial gesture”, is only “a first step”, assures 20 Minutes the president of Fnaut Grand-Est. Above all, he wants “compensation for service not done, over the past three months” and not those to come. And he warns that the Fnaut will not hesitate, “if the individual requests for compensation to the SNCF are refused, to seize the transport mediator, because there is a prejudice which is clear and which existed even before the Reme “. On the side of the Grand-Est Region, Thibaud Philipps, on the other hand, conceives this gesture already “as compensation for the inconveniences which have already been suffered and which existed at the end and beginning of the years. »
An ill-adapted transport plan
If the Fnaut recognizes “a little less untimely deletions lately”, it especially regrets the “adapted transport plan” put in place by the SNCF leaving the feeling that everything is done for the Reme to work, “to the detriment” of the classic TER traffic. Like “in the Bruche Valley, the Alsace plain or north towards Wissembourg, where stops have been removed. But who are also experiencing timetable changes that put high school students, working people, trains at rush hour in favor of REME omnibus trains with its direct or semi-direct trains, ”plague François Giordani.
So many complaints that seem to be partly heard on Tuesday. It was “clearly” established with the SNCF, explained Thibaud Philipps and the vice-president of the Eurometropolis in charge of transport Alain Jund, and crossed swords with the SNCF during the meeting, that “if the difficulties were to continue, it would be requested to extend the compensation beyond three months”. Main sticking point, the paratransit plan. Firmly discussed, a new schedule, with realistic stages for the SNCF and punctuated with assessments, is recorded. The idea is now “of a gradual increase” in order to arrive, towards the end of August, at the Reme which was initially planned, explain the elected officials.
This will thus result, from February 6, with “omnibus trains, which will stop again, “as before while waiting for an additional offer”, explains Thibaud Philipps, in intermediate stations and at peak times, on lines where major problems have been identified. “That’s the whole challenge of the Reme, to re-serve the intermediate stations, so that people are no longer forced to take their personal vehicle, so that they regain confidence and the path of the rail”, hammered Alain Jund during a press briefing. A bet that is just waiting to be taken up for the first Reme in France, and whose implementation is observed far beyond the Alsatian capital…
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