Behind her, a TER passes like a speedster, then another, and another, in a handful of minutes. “Every day, around forty trains cross La Vraie-Croix, which is cut in two by the railway,” explains Monique Danion, mayor of the town from 1995 to 2020. Residents see the train pass, feel its breath… but since 1993, they no longer climb there. That year, the railway stop closed, to “make the public service (….) more attractive in relation to the private car” and “accelerate the operation of a certain number of TERs”, announced the SNCF. Maintaining the stopover at La Vraie-Croix “was no longer justified given its attendance”. It is true that in what remains of the train, that is to say a fleshy administrative file (and a platform overgrown with vegetation), the documents are final: during the winter of 1992, the passenger count was carried out by the SNCF over a week ended with a 0 score. “There was no longer anyone riding in it, so we were reasonable. It was a different time,” comments Monique Danion, then first assistant.
Resignation in the face of the triumph of the car
Thirty-one years later, while mobility must fight against polluting single-use vehicles, local rail services are slipping. “With hindsight, we should never have accepted that,” judges Monique Danion, who, when she was a schoolgirl, took the Micheline to go to boarding school in Vannes, in the 1960s. “Especially since the Redon- Rennes has kept more local stops,” she adds.
At the beginning of the 1990s, some residents began to work outside the city, especially in Vannes. “The workers who went to work at the Michelin factory did not need the train, they had the company bus, and in any case the train schedules did not suit the factories,” explains Monique Danion. A first municipal housing estate had already been built in the 1980s, near the… station. But at the same time, “the car was developing. Until then, there was mainly one per family, and we moved to one for Mrs. and one for Mr.
1978-2024: will it stop, will it not stop?
In the town hall archives, we understand to what extent the fight for this local service 20 km from Vannes, and in direct opposition to the spirit of the TGV, was an eternal beginning again. In 1978, the train no longer stopped at La Vraie-Croix. The municipal council then protested against “the dismantling of public services in rural areas”. In 1982, he returned to the charge, invoking (already) “the context of the high cost of living and the increasing cost of fuel”. In 1983, the SNCF agreed to make another stopover in the town. Provided that “the number of passengers getting on or off is at least three”. A challenge met with flying colors, which earned La Vraie-Croix two additional daily stops in 1988. But in 1995, Monique Danion, who had become mayor, took up her pilgrim's staff again. She relaunched the Region in 2007, then in 2010. After studies, in March 2012, the Region responded that it was waiting for the arrival of the high-speed line, in 2017, which runs on the same lines, to make a decision. “The addition of the stopover is not feasible without renunciations in other territories”, finally wrote the Region to the mayor in 2015, because it would lead to a travel time of approximately 3 minutes more between Rennes and Vannes. Minutes worth gold.
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