This week, the president of Vert wants to escape. Problem: to afford a train ticket, you'll have to break the bank. Click here to (re)listen to this column broadcast on France inter on November 13, 2024.
Mathieu Vidard: Juliette, I sense that you are feeling restless today. Have you booked your train tickets for Christmas?
I don't know about you, Mathieu, but with all the good news in recent weeks, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, climate displaced people and the floods in Spain , I wanted to take off and book my next vacation, by train, of course!
So I went to the SNCF website and there – badaboum – I fell out of my chair. I was offered a Paris-Strasbourg flight on December 21 for the tidy sum of 130 euros. “But why is the train so expensive?”, I asked myself, like many of you. That’s good, because my colleague Anne-Claire Poirier looked into the subject in Vert.
Already, expensive or cheap, it depends on which train we are talking about. TERs, these regional express trains, are relatively inexpensive, because they are subsidized by the regions which pay two thirds of our tickets.
The Intercités, these main lines at moderate speed, are supported by the State to the tune of 25% of the ticket price.
And for the TGV, Juliette?
This is where the problem lies. For these high-speed trains, prices can skyrocket. The TGV does not benefit from any subsidy, even if VAT is reduced to 5.5%. It is above all the price of the rail toll, intended to finance the maintenance of the network, which is expensive. It represents approximately 40% of the ticket price.
Apart from fixed costs, SNCF sets its prices dynamically, using the yield managementa completely barbaric term which means that pricing is done in real time. It's simple: the more successful a journey is, the higher the prices go. And that’s often what drives people crazy.
Okay, the TGV may be expensive, but compared to what?
This is THE question we need to ask ourselves, Mathieu. Because, when it comes to traveling to the other side of France or visiting a neighboring country, the plane often wins the battle for the wallet. According to a Greenpeace survey, a train ticket costs on average 2.6 times more than a plane ticket.
For what ? Airlines do not pay kerosene tax or VAT on international flights, and VAT is reduced to 10% on domestic flights. However, the listeners of Earth Squared know it well, the plane is not the friend of the ecological transition. For a journey between Rouen (Seine-Maritime) and Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), the plane generates on average 65 times more greenhouse gases than rail, according to calculations by the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe ).
For its part, the car is not necessarily more economical. When planning a trip, we often forget to count, in addition to gasoline and tolls, the amortization of the purchase of the vehicle, maintenance and insurance which represent on average 350 euros per month, or 4 300 euros per year, according to the Climate Action Network.
So, if you are alone in your car, a journey will cost you on average 18 euros per 100 kilometers, and 21 euros with tolls, as measured by the Transport Regulatory Authority. Divide by two, if there are two of you. By TGV, it will be 11.60 euros for 100 kilometers.
The big difference is that the train doesn't allow us to go everywhere and that the rail network loses kilometers every year. Conversely, public money still encourages cars by supporting the construction of new roads, and even motorways. Suffice to say that we are only at the very beginning of our great journey towards soft mobility.
As for me, I ended up breaking the bank to buy myself a ticket for the holidays but, at least, I did it with all the information in mind.
???? Vert is on France inter! Every Wednesday at 2:50 p.m., find a new current affairs column from our journalists Loup Espargilière and Juliette Quef live in La Terre au carré.
