A report on the future of night trains to be delivered by the government to parliament before Tuesday " should be ready by the end of the summer ", its drafting having been delayed by the coronavirus crisis, the transport ministry said.
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“ In the context of Covid-19, transport professionals and ministry teams were mobilized by crisis management. (...) They could not carry out the consultations of the many actors ”, one explained in the entourage of the Secretary of State for Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari. " The report should be ready at the end of the summer, " however, the same source added.
Revival prospects for night trains
The Mobility Orientation Law (LOM), promulgated at Christmas, requests the government to present to Parliament " by June 30, 2020 " a report on the prospects for a revival of night trains. The executive must take an interest in the “ development of new TET lines ” (regional balance trains, the Intercités), “ by specifying, in particular, the conditions for improving the supply of night trains to in terms of their interest in meeting the needs of opening up the regions furthest from the main traffic routes, as well as national and intra-European connections and in reducing the ecological footprint ”.
The SNCF only operates two night train lines in France, from Paris to Briançon (Hautes-Alpes), and from Paris to Rodez, Cerbère (Pyrénées-Orientales) and Latour-de-Carol (Pyrénées-Orientales), whose circulation must resume on July 4 - with substitution buses between Toulouse and Latour-de-Carol due to works.
Thello (a subsidiary of Trenitalia) also offers a Paris-Milan-Venice and the Russian railways Paris-Moscow and Nice-Moscow, but these connections are suspended due to coronavirus.
