The French Transport Regulatory Authority (ART) recently published the results of a study conducted in 2019 on the typical profile of the user of the TGV and its low-cost ersatz, the OuiGo.
There are many myths about the socio-professional representation of the different means of transport, with the train being the one for the poorest and the plane the one for the wealthiest.
We have already seen in the past that the myth that exists around the airplane is totally unfounded, with figures to back it up: the airplane is in fact the means of transport of the most modest, the lowest income groups and the inactive. It’s finally logical and we’ve explained why.
So let’s see what’s about trains.
Upper income groups over-represented on high-speed trains
No more suspense: the upper income groups represent 48% of TGV users, even though they represent only 10% of the population!
The reason is well known: the train is still too expensive for the most modest and, unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that this will change in the near future.
In any case, this is good business for the SNCF, which is transforming its stations into shopping centers and huge advertising spaces, proof that the TGV stations attract a “bankable” clientele.
We can of course hope that the long-awaited opening to competition will bring down prices, but it won’t be so obvious. There are huge infrastructure costs in rail, which will in any case (and logically) be passed on to the new operators and mean that rail will always be structurally more expensive to operate than air.
The only hope is that the new operators will be better managed than our beloved national railway and therefore more efficient in terms of costs.
Or should the train be more heavily subsidized? Impossible. Firstly because at a certain level it would become illegal and secondly because SNCF is already addicted to public money and even without exceptional aid it “swallows” every year twice the money that was used to save Air France-KLM this year.
Families take the car…or maybe the plane
Confirmation that it is mainly a problem of price, people do not take the TGV in family, or little. 68% of the trips are solo trips!
To promote ecology against a background of class struggle: an intellectual fraud
There is no question for us to judge the consumption behaviors of some and others because they are totally logical and rational in relation to the price and the speed of the trip in relation to the context.
On the other hand, there is one thing that is obvious: the totally unfounded and therefore unproductive character of speeches that try to promote an environmental policy (often punitive) by justifying it in a totally demagogic way by old relents of class struggle.
No, the airplane that pollutes is not the means of transportation of the wealthy classes and the train that does not pollute is not the means of transportation of the most modest.
The plane (which makes more effort than one says and pollutes less than one thinks) is the favorite means of transport of the most modest and the train (which pollutes more than one thinks) is that of the most well-to-do.
Maybe one day we will be able to have a dispassionate debate on the subject. But before that, it is necessary to stop talking nonsense and for the general public to show a little critical sense instead of swallowing everything they are told. On that day we will make the environment a shared subject and not a reason for division.
In the meantime, everything seems to be done to steer the modest clientele towards the car. You have been warned.
Photo : OuiGo by ClS via Shutterstock
