It's pretty hard to dispute.
There was a time when holidays started on the first step of the train, and that is no longer the case.
A Corail or a TGV took the families, for a reasonable sum, to join the grandparents, or in transhumance at altitude in winter, and the relaxation began while contemplating the spinning landscapes of France at the window.
Today, appeasement comes rather at the arrival station, when the passenger is sure of no longer being held hostage, for a service that has become more than random.
In their latest book,
Descente aux enfers, vie et mort de la SNCF
(Fayard, 2019), Marie-Christine Tabet and Christophe Dubois detail the recent history of the group in a fascinating way, and the reasons for this accelerated decrepitude.
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A general degradation
Because since the 1980s, and the height of the launch of the TGV, what a change!
All aspects of the service have deteriorated, say the authors of the book.
First on the respect of schedules.
"Keeping the minute" is a forgotten leitmotif, that of a golden age when railway workers constituted a kind of labor aristocracy.
Today, the heart is gone.
Of the 15,000 scheduled daily trains, 480 are canceled on average.
According to Arafer, the sector's regulatory authority, an employee arrives late at least once a week if he uses the SNCF in Île-de-France.
The human factor is often involved.
What's going on with the red vests?
The book of course mentions the unions and their denial of reality (it's well known), with an easy tendency to "disengage" to keep sometimes delirious advantages.
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As for the network, it is one of the worst rated in Europe, just ahead of those of Bulgaria and Romania.
Level crossings, signs, rails dating from before the Second World War... Decrepit everywhere.
A report by Swiss engineers pointed to "the beginnings of degeneration" in 2005, but nothing significant was done until the tragic accident in Brétigny in 2013. Since then, investment promises have been pouring in, but problems continue, with sometimes impressive breakdowns such as in July 2018 in Montparnasse.
To believe that nobody takes the measure of the problem.
Starting with the emblematic Guillaume Pépy, at the head of the company since 2008?
Pépy the indestructible
He is there throughout the book (
Guillaume Pepy has not been president of the SNCF since October 31, 2019, editor's note
).
He reigns supreme over the SNCF, and represents it on television sets.
Would it be him, the big person responsible for the sinking of the company?
No, the authors seem to answer, paying homage to his deep knowledge of a complex industry, and his disinterest in personal enrichment.
He and his teams even launched the company on an international conquest that was costly in resources, but successful.
As far as French trains are concerned, he remains a State clerk, powerful indeed, and capable of standing up to his ministers, but who submits to the major government choices, because the man is more than anything to stay in post.
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Moreover, where the enarque really shines according to the two journalists, it is certainly in the art of making himself untouchable.
His technique?
"core" any circle of influence.
The master of communications coaxes journalists with unlikely seminars (cooking classes, etc.), and hands out “T” cards (a VIP card not available for sale).
Both a businessman and a senior civil servant, his networks resemble him, from the Century to all the ministries where he advances his proteges.
All this ensures unfailing support in critical moments, such as when his place as president was called into play in 2013. The only real complaint that the Court of Auditors addresses to him is ultimately his propensity for “suffocating and expensive communication »: 200 million euros per year, and 700 dedicated employees.
Often,
The European rail liberalization injunction
And what has this owner done, if not turn a blind eye for decades, to the slow drift of the SNCF?
That may be the real crux of the problem.
Successive governments have all unreservedly approved the decisions of Brussels on the liberalization of the rail sector;
they never translated them into a national strategy.
The 2018 railway reform, which has the state take over part of the company's debt and put an end to the status of railway worker, gives the group some oxygen, and some hope to users.
But on opening up to competition, the government continues to make the French believe that nothing will change, explain Marie-Christine Tabet and Christophe Dubois.
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But everything will change, and in the near future.
The book refers to the example of freight, already liberalized: in a few years, the SNCF has lost 40% of the market, the workforce concerned has been halved, and the activity continues to lose money.
The opening up to the private sector for the transport of people will also make it impossible to carry out the land-use planning mission that fell to the railways.
Small municipalities will have to pay to maintain the line that serves them, while connections between large
smart-cities
will be the subject of fierce trade wars.
The SNCF, with its additional costs and its lack of agility, may well leave the feathers that remain.
The authors also conclude the book with a chapter of anticipation as sad as it is realistic on the "public" company in 2037, a hundred years after its creation... It leaves the reader taken by a very Viscontian bitterness, on what was the French railway and what it will never be again.
