Toulouse-Barcelona by plane, an ecological scandal? The low-cost company Vueling will launch an air link between Toulouse and Barcelona from July 1. But this new line raises doubts on the part of environmentalists, because the two cities are separated by only 340 kilometers.
Charlène Fleury, coordinator of the “Rester sur Terre” network, denounced a “leap backwards” on BFMTV on Thursday. “The plane is the most polluting means of transport,” she recalled, “and the least necessary, especially on small lines like these.” According to her, “on the contrary, the railway line that was abandoned in 2020 must be restored.”
Launched in 2013 through an alliance between SNCF and Renfe, the direct link had been stopped during the health crisis and has not been reactivated. Now the fastest journey takes between 3.5 and 4 hours, with a connection in Narbonne. And this despite the use of two successive TGVs (Renfe or SNCF).
“If there is no direct rail connection between Toulouse and Barcelona since 2020, it is for economic reasons,” explains Arnaud Aymé, a transport expert at the firm Sia Partners, to BFMTV. Competing with cars and coaches, the link accounted for “only 10-11%” of the market share.
One in three train seats filled in 2020
“If the SNCF stopped that, it was because there was a seat [occupé] sur trois à bord de ce train donc ça perdait de l’argent”, a développé l’expert. “Or sur ce type de service là, c’est la SNCF qui supporte tous les coûts et qui doit gagner de l’argent avec the recipes. So if the elected officials say we need a rail link, let them pay up,” he suggested.
According to Arnaud Aymé, “the problem with the train is that it is economically viable when there is enough traffic”. “To make a train run you need a railway infrastructure that must be built and maintained. To make an airplane fly, you need the sky and you don’t need to build the sky and it’s free, ”he summarized.
Charlène Fleury believes, however, that “we cannot settle for seeing the economic interest”. The coordinator of the “Staying on Earth” network “questions” that the air link “is possible” and calls “on the contrary to promote the train” and “make it competitive with the plane” through incentive measures.
Would banning air links improve the situation? “In 2020, when there was a direct rail link and there weren’t many planes between the two, that didn’t improve the load factor,” replies Arnaud Aymé. For this, “the car, carpooling and the coach should also be prohibited.”
As for the air link, he is currently “not sure if it works” according to Arnaud Aymé. “We’ll see if it’s successful, it won’t necessarily be the case,” he said, calling the Vueling affair a “trial balloon.” The prices of the low cost company range between 22.90 and 79.90 euros each way.
Source: BFM TV
