Thomas Morales: "Mom, I missed the train!"

Thomas Morales is the author, in particular, of “Praise of the car.

Defense of an endangered species” (Éditions du Rocher, 2018), and “My last session: Marielle, Broca and Belmondo” (Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2021).

Latest book published: "And now, here comes a long winter" (Éditions Héliopoles, 2022).

The "start-up nation" is at a standstill.

General failure.

Controllers' strike.

Queuleuleu corks at the gates of Paris.

Passengers on Tranxene.

The cherished mobility of our rulers is in slow motion!

We are a country at dock, in drydock, with lost agility.

Christmas without a wagon, Easter with a firebrand?

A strange time when we boast of queen fluidity, lightning-fast commercial exchanges, the plasticity of identities, porous borders, renewable energies, unbridled competitiveness and when a banal Paris-Lyon becomes an almost impossible mission for many families.

And we want to compete with China, export our know-how and spread our French genius?

This year, the Nativity will be late.

Don't drive around this weekend, there's nothing to be alarmed or upset about!

It is the face of a France at a standstill that has been offered to us since yesterday.

The delights of the nursery look gray.

We could laugh (with rage) if this immobility had not become the indelible mark of a deep decline, rooted in our habits, which radically changes the way we move around, and therefore hope for a serene future.

We are entering the era of trampling and waiting, in a parallel dimension where the very idea of ​​time will be abrogated.

Where a Paris-Clermont that arrives with a four-hour overrun will be considered good news by the authorities.

In the train, we will applaud such promptness and salute the skipper.

I even foresee a start of ola in first class.

Is a train that respects its destination and its timetable a primary right or a miracle of the gods,

On the move, the freedom to move around, chabadabada weekends in Normandy on a whim, outings with friends in wetsuits, large tables with cousins ​​from the Gers, all that is over!

Thomas Morales

Thanks to the SNCF, we have at least widened our vocabulary with new words as singing as "transhipment" and "catenary".

At the wake, in half a century, we will tell our grandchildren, the blow of the breakdown as formerly that of the Botte de Nevers.

I am talking here about the legendary breakdown of the loco which occurred on the Intercités n°5959 on December 17 which put Auvergne as far away as the Equator.

Not sure that this will make future generations laugh so eager for distant travels and fast connection, immediacy and unconstrained travel.

On the move, the freedom to move around, chabadabada weekends in Normandy on a whim, outings with friends in wetsuits, large tables with cousins ​​from the Gers, all that is over!

Travel will no longer shape youth.

We N'

Read also“We are disgusted”: the French distraught in the face of yet another strike at the SNCF for Christmas

Who can believe me when I say that Bourges-Paris could be reached in two hours by road, some thirty years ago, without taking oneself for Fangio and without insulting the constabulary;

that my great-uncle scooter driver took less time to approach the banks of the Garonne from his native Berry on a

in the 1960s than it takes today to make a round trip between the Lion de Denfert and Étretat in an electric vehicle;

that Johnny or Sagan only needed six short hours between the boulevard Saint-Germain and the port of Saint-Tropez.

The praise of slowness is no longer a success in bookstores, rather the sad reality experienced by millions of our compatriots by metro, RER, Michelin or car.

Ile-de-France transport in suffocation, crowded stations since the start of the school year in September, perpetual work on the network, permanent excavation of the roadway, anger and dejection, exhaustion and bitterness, this is our daily lot.

We are on edge.

Did we deserve such degraded treatment and this form of denial?

Why do you want to punish us so much?

The reasons for these dysfunctions can be picked up in spades: infrastructure out of breath, anti-car culture, sectional interests, non-existent social dialogue, bunkered city centers, relegated suburbanites, forgotten rural people, technocratic bottlenecks, lack of global vision and inability to think movement!

In a country that saw the birth of Béjart and Monet, the Concorde and the Citroën SM, the TGV and the minitel, standing still is a historical aberration.