“Backward leap”, “ecological aberration”…, Vueling’s announcement of a new seasonal airline between Barcelona and Toulouse, only 340 kilometers away, festers the defenders of the ecological transition, in particular the president of the region of Occitania.
“It’s inconceivable that there aren’t more rail connections, especially given the infrastructures!”, stressed Carole Delga, who met this Wednesday with her counterpart Pere Aragonès in Barcelona. “It is not acceptable that, apart from the road, the only transport offer is the plane.”
Remember that launched in 2013 through an alliance between SNCF and Renfe, the direct link was detained 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).
One third of the seats occupied at the time on the TGV line
“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.
Still, Carole Delga advocates for a revival of this line. “I am going to remind Jean-Pierre Farandou”, president of the SNCF, “all the interest that the SNCF has in being a driving force and not a brake”, underlines Carole Delga.
“If the SNCF stopped that, it was because there was a seat [occupé] of three on board this train, so it was losing money”, estimates Arnaud Aymé. “But in this type of service there, it is the SNCF that bears all the costs and the one that must earn money with the receipts. So if the elected officials say a rail link is needed, they should pay,” he suggested.
Source: BFM TV
