Cheap train tickets? It doesn't exist, or almost doesn't

There is one main obstacle to the development of truly low-cost rail services: the very heavy infrastructure requirements of this mode of transport, both in terms of construction and maintenance.

Between galloping inflation, erosion of purchasing power and rising energy costs, many consumers are complaining about the high cost of rail travel in France, sometimes with good reason. They also complain about the price of the train in relation to the service provided, which is also true but has more to do with the national operator’s choice of product positioning than with a purely financial rationale, and does not fall within the scope of this article.

“It’s not the train that’s too expensive, it’s the plane that’s not expensive enough.“. For once, SNCF Chairman Mr. Farandou has only said half a stupid thing, which is a big improvement compared with the days of COVID, when he maintained that trains were safer from a health point of view than airplanes, because an airplane “of course” can’t renew cabin air by taking it from outside. Which, of course, is not true.

Half-bullshit, because by saying this he’s insinuating that prices should be artificially increased in a competing sector which, let’s not forget, self-finances its operations, safety and infrastructure in France without recourse to public money. On the other hand, he’s right when he implies that we pay a fair price for the train, at least that’s our perception.

Trains require a lot of infrastructure

This is where a fast comparison with air travel is necessary. The cost structure of these two modes of transport is largely similar. Roughly speaking, we have :

– A departure and arrival point, a station in one case, an airport in the other, financed by fees and commercial revenues.

– trains or aircraft.

– Energy

– Staff who have to be paid.

And if we stopped there, the comparison might be valid, but it’s not.

To fly a plane you need two airports and a plane, to run a train you need two stations, a train and…a railroad track and catenary wires. And this comes at a price, not only for building these infrastructures, but also for maintaining them.

How much does a railroad track cost?

Before we even talk about the cost of building a railroad, we need to think about the preliminary studies for its construction, which can take years to complete, given the many parameters to be taken into account. Then the land has to be acquired, which requires lengthy procedures, and in the end very large sums are spent before the first rail has even been laid.

The cost of building a kilometer of track depends on a number of factors, such as the terrain (rivers need to be crossed, tunnels dug) and the speed at which you want to run the trains: a high-speed line has more constraints, and is therefore much more expensive than a line designed for regional trains.

According to the information we’ve found (but if you have more precise information, we’d be delighted to hear from you), the average cost of building a TGV line is 15 million euros per kilometer, and that of a normal line 1 million.

And once the track is built, it has to be maintained, at a cost of 4.4 billion euros a year for the French network, which comprises 30,000 km of track.

We’re not talking about lavish spending or poor management: this is the price of an efficient network and, above all, passenger safety. Expenses that are non-negotiable.

Infrastructure costs are borne by the passenger

Logically enough, it’s the passenger who bears the infrastructure costs, just as the airline industry is financed by a myriad of taxes on the price of the plane ticket, which sometimes means that the price of the taxes is higher than the price of the ticket.

Technically speaking, it’s a business called SNCF Réseau that looks after network maintenance and passes on its costs to the various operators – SNCF, Trenitalia, Renfe – via tolls, which in turn pass them on, as logically as possible, in the price of the ticket.

Today, we’re talking about 9 euros per kilometer for a high-speed line, and overall, these tolls represent 40% of the price of a TGV ticket and 15% for a regional train.

And given that the French rail network is aging, older than that of its European neighbors, and that a huge backlog has been created in its maintenance, we can’t expect to see these costs fall, and logically so, their impact on train fares will remain high at best and at worst will increase.

By way of comparison, aircraft pay an overflight fee when they fly over a country, the cost of which is of course passed on to passengers. But the comparison stops there: in the absence of infrastructure in the air, this charge is used only to finance air traffic control, and its cost is ridiculous in comparison (a few hundred euros per aircraft for medium-haul), simply because the costs it finances are ridiculous compared to those of rail infrastructure.

Bottom line

Rail transport is expensive by definition, because of its very nature: it takes up a lot of land and requires very expensive infrastructure to build and maintain (and we’re not even talking about its environmental footprint, which is anything but neutral, contrary to popular belief).

Technically speaking, to escape this constraint, trains would have to run without ground infrastructure, which has a name: an airplane.

On a more serious note, there’s only one way to cut the bill: reduce the need for high-speed track and overall train speed, which will reduce wear and tear on the network and impose fewer safety constraints. But it would mean making airplanes competitive again on medium-haul routes, which is not the current trend.

Maybe the cost could be passed on to the community? This is already to some extent the case with the many subsidies and debt write-offs from the state to the SNCF. And this would put the burden on the French taxpayer in a country that attracts a large number of foreign tourists and even cross-border workers. And once again, it could be viewed unfavorably by the taxpayer, while a competing sector is totally self-financing.

Or play on other components of the ticket price: staff and train costs, and cut back on services. What nobody wants either.

We have to accept that cheap trains don’t exist, or almost don’t, and certainly not at high speed. We’ll have to learn to live with expensive or slower trains, and taxing other sectors to finance them won’t change a thing.

The idea of the train as a popular and inexpensive means of transport is an illusion that has unfortunately been tried to ingrain in people’s minds, but it’s a mistake that risks backfiring on people’s perception of this means of transport, and that’s a shame.

Image : TGV in France via Shutterstock