“We can do the railway in a different way, I firmly believe in this offer that is complementary to the TGV and that is aimed at cars and coaches”, explained Christophe Fanichet, General Director of SNCF Voyageurs last April when launching the Ouigo classic train.
These new pink trains circulate on the lines Paris-Lyon and Paris-Nantes. The idea: offer an ultra-low-cost alternative to the TGV Inoui and Ouigo with the promise of a low, fixed price (10 to 30 euros per trip or even 5 euros for children under 12) in exchange for longer travel times. long (Paris-Lyon in 5 hours) and old trains.
The SNCF then gave itself two years to validate the economic relevance of this offer. But seven months after this launch, it seems that success is just around the corner.
In France and abroad
900,000 tickets have been sold and “we hope to reach passenger number one million by the end of the year. The product particularly appeals to young people who make up more than a third of customers,” a spokesperson for SNCF Voyageurs explains to our fellow passengers. Parisian.
Based on your success, the slow Ouigo will multiply. “We want to continue gaining market share on the highway by launching the offer wherever there are people on the highway. Either in France or abroad”, continues the manager without giving details.
But we can imagine new connections to Rennes, Bordeaux, Marseille, Lille or Brussels, successful connections by TGV. For the SNCF, the model is above all economic since there is no purchase of rolling stock. The operator recycles old trains that circulate in particular on TER networks.
spartan comfort
On the passenger side, if the exterior of the trains has been repainted in the colors of this new brand (pink with hints of blue), the interior is a bit of a leap into the past. These are Corail trains from the 1980s that have been cleaned up but not modernised. Therefore, there is no Wi-Fi and few electrical outlets.
“We will go further in interior renovation if we continue with the experiment,” however, Stéphane Blandin, director of development for Oslo, the SNCF Voyageurs subsidiary that operates the new service, had told AFP.
However, despite this Spartan comfort, the offer clearly finds its audience and is part of the arsenal of the French to preserve their purchasing power in a context of galloping inflation.
Source: BFM TV
