▶The 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris finished yesterday and were a great success, with the Paralympics still to come. |
▶To coincide with this, French Railways and Belgian Railways collaborated to launch a new cross-border rail service between Paris and Brussels. |
▶ But even before the Games finished, this new service was halved to just four carriages (see the screenshot below) – why is that? |
When the new service launched in July, one commentator called it a “godsend” because “Since Eurostar (ex-Thalys) is the sole operator on the Paris-Brussels route, with only limited capacity using single-level HSTs, they can charge you a S*** lot of money for such a short journey”. |
While it uses rolling stock from Belgian Railways (SNCB/NMBS), it is a collaboration, with French Railways (SNCF) taking over the train within France. |
However, on its in-house app and website, SNCF does not sell this new service. This means that the vast majority of rail passengers in France do not even know it exists. |
Consequently, due to the lack of demand – just two weeks after starting with eight carriages – the service has already been halved to four carriages (see the screenshot below). |
ALLRAIL’s Policy Officer Salim Benkirane says: “We want cross-border rail to grow. So why are some companies restricting where the train tickets are sold? |
What we need is an Open Market – Full Transparency. All Rail Tickets should be shown and sold not at 5% or 50% but at 100% of Rail Ticket Vendors.” |