SNCF maximise passenger revenue

International Railway Journal, June, 2003 by Steve Bennett

Inevitably, there is a huge doubt over the fate of the Corail fleet, which is currently being refurbished under a five-year rolling programme (IRJ June 2000 p20). Some of these trains will become redundant in any case when they are replaced by TGV services operating the new TGV Est line. Meanwhile, SNCF will almost certainly seek to offload most of its loss-making classic services on to local or regional authorities, which would then have to subsidise them. The final decision, however, will lie not just with local politicians, but with the national government.

Despite the expansion of TGV services, grandes lignes' classic services still carry almost 50% of its passenger traffic. The implications of transferring them outside SNCF's jurisdiction would be significant financially as well as politically.

But Emmerich feels that leaving the classic services in SNCF's hands would tie the operator's hands and damage its prospects for growth. He warned: "Every Euro we spend on these routes is a Euro that we cannot invest in TGV services. The issue is not about writing off assets, because the Coral fleet has already been assigned a low value. It is that in five years time, Corail services will represent only about 10% of our revenue."