Emmanuel Macron comes to blow this Friday at the Gare de Lyon in Paris the 40 candles of the SNCF fetish train.
Launched by Georges Pompidou, built under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and inaugurated on September 22, 1981 by François Mitterrand between Paris and Lyon, it “changed France and the lives of the French”, as the CEO of the SNCF emphasized this morning, Jean-Pierre Farandou, specifying that the high speed train "has transported three billion people in 40 years".
But the TGV is waiting for its successor, the eighth generation: called TGV M, this train should begin to circulate in 2024. Emmanuel Macron must unveil a life-size model of the motor of this TGV of the future.
VIDEO.
Greener, more spacious: here is the future TGV
This new TGV ordered from Alstom will not be faster than the last trains running on the French network, but the SNCF wants it to be more comfortable, more flexible, greener, more economical.
320 km / hour, no faster
"We are at 320 km / h, we are not trying to go faster," confirms Jean-Pierre Farandou.
Which evokes a "carbon footprint reduced by 32%", "less energy consumption", but also "comfort on board", with flexible spaces and spaces "in one night" depending on demand and journeys.
Since the inauguration of the first TVG in 1981, the group has bought 549 trainsets for around 15 billion euros, further indicates its CEO. The French high-speed network currently extends over 2,700 km, the fourth in the world after China, Spain and Japan.