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SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the netwo

SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. What it needs to do is cut the number of excessive public sector workers, reduce costs, and stop running the business like a political arm of the government. I can bet that the reason they think they need to do all these things is that cost pressure is rising on them, and they think they need to branch out / cut off compartments of the business to make it better. But this is tinkering rather than addressing the fundamental issues (inability to fire people, change cost structure, etc. due to political interference). Public rail is a money-losing venture, in every country (except Hong Kong). That's what "public" means. But it's important to have. Just how much money-losing depends on the political environment and skill of the management. UK tried this sort of thing and it left everyone with a shittier experience, though they could claim that they successfully privatized the industry -- everyone knows that's a total lie. At least France has a history of pride in the speed of the trains, so that will keep things in check a bit. They'll pay through the nose for it though.

titanix2 8y ago
> It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. I think this is mandated by the EU. And it could be a good thing. I'm personally fed up to be treated like a thief when I forgot composting my ticket (which happen because there is not gate to access the rails) or when I could not buy it in the first place (some station doesn't have have vending machines). Also the price lottery for TGV tickets is infuriating (price goes from 14€ to 140€ for the ride I take the most) and the commercial strategy of the SNCF is to offer cheap TGV which lacks any confort to kind of punish you not buying the more expensive option. But actually I would even be happier if we import all the working staff from Japan and make them the whole thing working smoothly under a join JR-France company.
- ambicapter 8y ago
  For english speakers, "composting" here means punching a ticket. I never understood where the word came from, and I'm a native French speaker.
  - bane 8y ago
    Wow, thanks for that. I can't find a definition in an English dictionary that was able to make sense of that. It appears to have etymology in Old French composte which comes from Latin "composita" or "compositum" which means something like "something put together". Even crazier I can't figure out how we arrive at the modern meaning of decaying vegetables to make soil...but I can arrive at how we got to "composite" which seems to have different but similar roots.
    - jcranmer 8y ago
      > Even crazier I can't figure out how we arrive at the modern meaning of decaying vegetables to make soil... The etymology I see all mentions "composte" as "mixture of leaves, manure, etc., for fertilizing land", which suggests that it started as people using a *composita of manure and plant detritus together to ferment for fertilizer and the word sense shifted from referring to the specific mixture to the general composting process.
      - bane 8y ago
        Ahh, that makes sense.
  - niea_11 8y ago
    Apparently the meaning doesn't come from the verb but from the italian word : "compositore" (according to wikitionary [1] and the larousse dictionary [2]) (again in [1]) "compositore" from italian is equivalent to "compositeur" in french which can mean "a person that writes music" but can also mean "a typographer or compositor". [1] : https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/composteur https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/composteur [2] : https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/composteur/17760 https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/composteur/17...
    - carlob 8y ago
      Funnily enough the word we use for stamping tickets in Italian is vidimare which comes from vidimus (seen) in Latin, so it's actually closer to visa in etymology.
- glandium 8y ago
  The JR service comes at a cost. Shinkansen tickets are vastly more expensive than TGV.
  - titanix2 8y ago
    Yes it's a bit more expensive but the trains themselves are way more confortable, most of the time on schedule and drive at full operational speed all the time because they rails are made for it. With TGV on the other hand you have a few sections which are standard rails and thus you the train drive at a normal (low) speed...
    - mcv 8y ago
      More comfortable than the TGV? The train I'm most familiar with is the Thalys, the high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris, and I'm not sure if it's more comfortable than other TGVs, but it's always a joy to travel in. I recently went to London in the Eurostar, and they'd managed to make the train experience feel like a plane. Very disappointing.
      - kmlx 8y ago
        Having recently used both the TGV and the Tokaido Shinkansen, I'd say the Hikari line is much more comfortable than any of the TGV trains. Regarding the Eurostar, it works like that because the UK is not in Schengen. As such, border control needs to happen. Not to mention the potential issues with terrorism. And the Eurostar is net inferior to any of the Shinkansen trains.
        mcv 8y ago
        The border checks absolutely added to the plane feeling of the experience, but Eurostar seats are also significantly more cramped than those of the Thalys.
        GordonS 8y ago
        Can confirm, I've been on the TGV and also a few bullet trains in Japan - the bullet trains were practically luxurious in terms of comfort and space, and the service was fantastic. I also found the bullet trains to be great value, especially when compared to the expensive, uncomfortable, over-crowded, slow, dirty, late trains here in the UK.
- isostatic 8y ago
  > I think this is mandated by the EU. Not really, the EU is democratic, and generally there's skeptisism in the EU about a liberal rail market. The Fourth Railway Package explicity allows tracks and trains to be owned by a single holding company. The main point of the package was things like harmonising safety standards across europe (so if you wanted to run a train from london to warsaw you wouldn't need to get safety certification from UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Poland). It will mean that a given EU government can't use the rail industry as a way of hiding state aid to people/industries. If SNCF are good, that's fine, they continue. If DB come along and say they can run France's network for half the cost, then DB get the job. > I'm personally fed up to be treated like a thief when I forgot composting my ticket That's because you're not traveling with a valid ticket. Try driving off from the petrol station without paying, or boarding a plane without showing a boarding pass. > Also the price lottery for TGV tickets is infuriating It's demand led, like planes. > the commercial strategy of the SNCF is to offer cheap TGV which lacks any confort to kind of punish you not buying the more expensive option. So buy the more expensive one if you value the comfort.
  - cowl 8y ago
    >That's because you're not travelling with a valid ticket. Try driving off from the petrol station without paying, or boarding a plane without showing a boarding pass. that's not even remotely close. I don't know exactly how it is in France but in Italy (and I suspect it's similar) I may have a monthly ticket clearly stating the validity FROM-TO, having my name on it and yet still if i don't time stamp it at the start of month i'm treated like a thief because bureaucracy says ALL tickets must be timestamped. WHY? how could i cheat with a named monthly subscription ticked? Ticket controllers not having to fear for their job don't even try to think and treat passengers with respect. Now that we have a private Operator the situation is a little bit better but still until we have laws that dictate nobody must do any effort to maintain the job it's not gonna be pretty. Now You may ask Why I don't simply time stamp it at the start of the month. Maybe i'm late and I miss my train But most of the time and in many stations the stamping machines do not work. courtesy of the same guaranteed monopoly Company.
    - 8y ago
jdietrich 8y ago
>UK tried this sort of thing and it left everyone with a shittier experience, though they could claim that they successfully privatized the industry -- everyone knows that's a total lie. Passenger volumes have more than doubled since privatisation, after a long period of stagnation under nationalisation. While walk-on fares have increased above the rate of inflation, advance fares are substantially cheaper. The supposed problems of the British rail network resemble that Yogi Berra quote - "nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21056703 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21056703 https://www.stagecoach.com/media/insight-features/the-facts-about-rail-fares.aspx https://www.stagecoach.com/media/insight-features/the-facts-...
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  That's really not a fair reflection. Privatisation came after nearly 20 years of Tory under investment and far from adequate under several administrations previously. It was, by the time of Major, a very predictable and well-worn trope. What better way to "prove" your lawn needs a private mowing service than barely mowing the lawn for a decade or two? It's quite easy to see why rolling stock was far beyond expected life. There was plenty wrong, many of which would have been resolved with adequate funding for newer rolling stock, routes, electrification and capacity. Investments that have come painfully slowly outside the South East, mostly with public funds, since privatisation. The cliche of terrible sandwiches was often true - well if you're being deprived of funds better to keep the train running than the sandwiches fresh. The meals in dining cars managed to stay pretty damn good. Far better than having a trolley service only, for instance. Major's privatisation was a case of "anything but this". Separating track, rolling stock and station building into three different companies was nuts. Public subsidy plummeted after privatisation, until inadequate maintenance was identified as cause of the Hatfield crash. Then reached never before seen peaks. They're still fiddling around to try and remove the systemic consequences of how it was privatised. Nothing that even slightly resembles the integrated transport The Netherlands can manage. Season tickets have increased in line with inflation, only because they were pegged by statute to inflation +/- 1%. On the day tickets, which didn't get that protection, have increased vastly in real terms. Don't forget the UK rushed to the car far more than European neighbours - Beeching etc - it's little surprise to see rail growing faster now we have gridlocked roads, having been pruned to almost non-existence. After 20 years it's not the disaster it might have been - mainly "thanks" to Hatfield - but it's far from a success. Especially outside the South East and on prices. Heaven help you if you ever use the trans Pennine. Seeing as this is on an article about TGV, just how is UK doing with high speed rail? Northern Powerhouse? Double decker trains?
Zombiethrowaway 8y ago
The French government passed a law in mid-2018 that ends the special "cheminot" contract for new hires. It will effectively grandfather the old way in 10-20 years, and make it smaller every year. So I don't think this is fair or accurate: "rather than addressing the fundamental issues (inability to fire people, change cost structure"
- ldng 8y ago
  Nor did that changed anything. Most employees are contractors nowadays. French politics must stop playing with trains and grow up. And fire the management that's been there for 10 years and made it worst.
agumonkey 8y ago
The sad part seems to be that: - track maintenance is lacking (at least by journalism investigation reports) - regional lines have shrunk, causing systemic back pressure on cars (partly fueling the yellow vest protests) I love the new TGV (regen braking) but it seems that holistically it's not a sure bet for the whole nation:
simula67 8y ago
> Public rail is a money-losing venture, in every country (except Hong Kong). That's what "public" means. But it's important to have Why ? I wish connectivity to airports here in India would improve and railways would just die
- ehmorris 8y ago
  I believe the Hong Kong metro owns and leases the land on top of its stations.
  - pas 8y ago
    Also, density. Amtrak [and other big country networks] also has money making routes, but that money is nothing when it comes the losses that need to be offset on the other routes.
- pas 8y ago
  Why important? Because public rail makes it possible to connect city centers. Airports are biiiiiiig, noisy, airplanes pollute a lot, and take off and landing is slow. Sure, planes are faster than trains, but they are a lot less efficient. Yes, it's hard to manage, yes it needs "roads" (tracks), whereas planes have the air, but planes are very much a luxury.
- adrianN 8y ago
  For many connections that are less than 500km or so apart, a train is faster than a plane. A good rail network also connects smaller towns that don't have an airport. It can also be used to transport goods. All these uses would have to be replaced by cars and trucks if you'd only focus on planes, that's not very good for the environment.
  - lultimouomo 8y ago
    Also, a 4 hour travel door-to-door on a plane means: * Half an hour to go to the airport * Half an hour passing security and waiting for boarding * 20 minutes between boarding and stable flight when you can start working on your laptop * One hour and 40 minutes when you can work cramped in a noisy environment with terrible air quality * 15 minutes descent and landing * 15 minutes deboarding and getting out of the airport * Half an hour to get where you need to be Same trip by train: * Half an hour till you are on the train * 3 hours working comfortably in a usually bigger space with ground level air pressure and very little noise * Half an hour to get where you need to be. Travel in reasonably modern trains is by far the best kind of business travel you can have today, IMO.
pathseeker 8y ago
>That's what "public" means. No, that's not what that means. "public" is just the only place a money-losing venture can continue in perpetuity. It's very easy for governments to have self-sustaining programs. They are still "public" but they bring in enough money to pay for themselves.
- atoav 8y ago
  Public means it is a service all citizen (aka the public) should benifit from. That doesn’t mean it is free of some sort of fee (see public libraries), but it also means it must be available to everyone (see public school). A good public train network returns a lot of money indirectly, because it keeps all sorts of people mobile and therefore makes it easier for them to fill free positions. And in some areas (e.g. in the Alps) a good rail service is a huge multiplicator for tourism which means a whole industry profits from a cheap and well working train network. The most important aspect of a public transport system is that it works well, is affordable and without disruptive changes can be so in 20 years time. The goal should be to reach these targets with efficiency. I am not convinced that privatized railways offer any benefit for the public — they tend to grab all sorts of public money while closing lines that leave part of the public isolated, because there is not much profit to be made. In practise this can be observed in multiple nations. And public train networks have competition: busses. In nations where people don’t rely as much on public transport (e.g. the US) it is only natural to come the conclusion that railways should be lead like private companies. People have cars anyways, gas is cheap, there is no real public transport network you need to compete with.
acchow 8y ago
Hong Kong's is profitable mostly because it is run as a real estate company. They acquire land before adding a metro station and then lease/sell the valuable land after adding the station. Why don't other cities do this?
- distances 8y ago
  I think all land within city limits should be publicly acquired with eminent domain before zoning and building of utilities. No reason to let the land value increase fall to private landowners when it's all due to build-up of public services. Better use the profits for maintaining the services.
  - mcv 8y ago
    That's roughly the case in Amsterdam. All land is technically owned by the city, and homeowners lease it for 50 years. When the lease will run out is always a detail to pay attention to when buying a home.
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      Leases that short must make getting a mortgage hard.
      - mcv 8y ago
        When the lease is about to run out, it means you need to reserve money for that, meaning the price of the house will be lower. I think you can still use the mortgage to pay for that lease. So overall it doesn't make much difference, it's just an extra thing to pay attention to, or you'll end up with unexpected costs.
        icebraining 8y ago
        If the lease is set to expire in twenty years, can you know in advance how much it will cost to renew, so that you can include it in the mortgage? If so, then it doesn't really seem to help the city to capture the gains that may have accrued over those years. If not, what happens if the lease now costs much more and you can't afford it? Do you get kicked out of the house?
rswail 8y ago
"Public rail is a money-losing venture" So are public schools, public hospitals and national defence. But they are enablers of everything else that we do and the actual purpose of government and taxes. Public transport needs to be as efficient as it can be while providing the services needed. There are additional benefits like providing a training environment for trades, ensuring that a heavy engineering skillbase is maintained, social cohesiveness and equality of opportunity to remote populations etc.
- taneq 8y ago
  So you're saying that a publicly funded utility should provide some kind of beneficial service to the public? Like it's some kind of public service?
  - deleted 8y ago
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- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  The government should not be engaging in money losing ventures to provide services that private companies will provide at no cost (other than point of service cost) to taxpayers. If they want to run a jobs program then fine, run a jobs program. Don't pretend your jobs program is an infrastructure program though. I have no problem with the government spending tax money on things, that's kind of its job, but resources are not infinite (eventually you run out of other people's money). I know this is a much hated opinion among the HN demographic and I won't win internet brownie points for saying it but government should not be spending taxpayer money on services private entities are willing to provide. Government should spend its money on things private industry won't do (like social safety nets, education and funding R%D for things private industry doesn't care about).
  - black_puppydog 8y ago
    > services that private companies will provide at no cost to taxpayers Like the private train companies that run around handing free rides to everyone?
otabdeveloper1 8y ago
> Public rail is a money-losing venture, in every country (except Hong Kong). Not in Russia. They had a $2 billion profit in 2017. It's also the third-largest rail company in the world, so yes, it can be done.
- speedplane 8y ago
  Not in Amtrak's Northeast corridor either. If Amtrak was run like a business, it could shut down a number of lines and become a cash-cow. But it decisively not run like a business.
- tasubotadas 8y ago
  How much of that is profit from industrial logistics (read moving oil), and which part of that are revenues from passengers?
- cosmolev 8y ago
  All this profit comes from freight operations. Passenger services are loss making.
  - otabdeveloper1 8y ago
    No. Their passenger services had around $100 million in profits, according to their 2017 report. Much lower margins, of course, but still profitable.
speedplane 8y ago
> Public rail is a money-losing venture, ... But it's important to have. Just how much money-losing depends on the political environment and skill of the management. Arguably, all public rail should lose money. Quality transportation is a huge economic driver of regional economies. If a rail service is making money, it likely means governments are underinvesting in their own economies.
- atoav 8y ago
  It usually also means that public transport is too expensive for those who are in need of it the most (e.g. people who can’t afford a car or for whom owning a car doesn’t make any sense — which is arguably more common in Europe than the US)
- close04 8y ago
  It usually does. Actually I am not familiar with one example where public rail actually makes a profit, in real terms. All public rail systems I know or have read about are subsidized by the state either directly or via subsidizing the fare for the traveler (or both).
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    Years ago I read an article where the author argued that between network effects and indirect beneficiaries of transportation services markets are extremely sub-optimal. Also the value of the service varies widely as well. One box contains a toaster anotherbox contains a vital part needed to get a machine shop back up and running.
  - atoav 8y ago
    I think we should stop counting profit as “how much tickets you sold” minus “how much money you spent”, but look at the effects of a public train system on the whole economy. I grew up in the Alps and I can guarantee that certain very profitable touristic locations wouldn’t even remotely work if there was no affordable and reliable train network that connected them to a airport, unless you want to turn some alpine area into a huge parking lot. On the same line that connects that spot to the cities there might be ten completely uninteresting villages whose population kinda relies on these trains to e.g. go to school, go shopping in the city etc. Some lines might not have any touristic benefit, but they raise the value of the whole network because it increases the destinations you can reach via train. In nations that have high petrol prices and where train networks already exist, train networks can be unprofitable and still boost economy as a whole. The question is: should everybody finance everybody elses mobility to a certain degree when it benefits economy as a whole? For me the answer is quite clear. I grew up in small village in some valley in the alps. Without affordable public transport I would have been devastated as a teenager. A profitable train network usually takes that profit from somewhere and that somewhere is typically public. I’d rather have an unprofitable train network that works, paid by my taxes than a profitable that doesn’t work even if I were prepared to pay for it. Same goes for Internet, Mobile networks, Water, Electricity.
deleted 8y ago
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benj111 8y ago
"SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition" I'm guessing this is being imposed on SNCF by national and European government. In their defence they seem to be doing the right things. They're preparing for competition by lowering their costs etc. The proposed system of giving each region the power to grant a monopoly seems a bit ill considered though.
iagooar 8y ago
> cut the number of excessive public sector workers I remind you, that we're talking about France here, where firing people is very, very hard. And we're talking public sector here, which would be a huge offense there. Protests would be massive.
- iagooar 8y ago
  Why is this getting down voted? Did I say something wrong? Not saying I don't agree with what the author suggested.
ownagefool 8y ago
Err UK rail was famously terrible before "privatisation". Not that privatisation is the answer, nor that being public was at fault, but I'm not sure rewriting history is helpful. Looking at UK water companies being privatised so their owners can stuff them full of debt to get around the profit caps is probably a better case study. Profit percentage caps are silly because the obvious way to make more money is to make the entire service more expensive by wasting money, this increasing turnover, thus increasing the size of that 4%. Monopolies being privatised doesn't seem super helpful either, but hey, that's the UK for you.
- elcomet 8y ago
  I read in a lot of articles that it is actually more terrible for a lot of tracks after privatisation in the UK. What happens is that companies focus on the most profitable tracks, so the other ones are not well maintained. An example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/05/the-guardian-view-on-rail-privatisation-going-off-the-tracks https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/05/the-gu...
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    And when franchises change the outgoing franchisee just milks it for the last two years or so - which lead to the complete fracking disaster of the thames link.
  - ownagefool 8y ago
    I'm not sure that article say's it's worse than pre-privatisation, just that it's not great now and they're right, I pay over £400 a month to sit on the floor for a train that turns up when it wants to. It's not exactly amazing. But, as a counter: https://www.ft.com/content/d192b1b4-458b-11e5-af2f-4d6e0e5eda22 https://www.ft.com/content/d192b1b4-458b-11e5-af2f-4d6e0e5ed... Now indeed, the terrible service in the past was most likely due to underfunding, but recent history suggests we'll consistently vote in a Government that starves national infrastructure then sell it off to it's mates, so it's hard to see public ownership lasting and resulting in success.
  - nickik 8y ago
conjectures 8y ago
"It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition." This certainly didn't help in the UK. It's been a shameful saga with multiple failures and no clear rationale. The theory was: privatisation -> ??? -> uber efficiency. Ignoring the fact that the economic theory which usually fills in the ??? requires free entry and exit into the market. That doesn't exist in the case of natural monopolies like rail.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Assuming the railway itself is public and shared, as in this case, how is rail a natural monopoly?
  - jnty 8y ago
    A key reason is that off-peak services are often subsidised by on-peak services, so to economically provide a good all-day service the whole thing needs to be provided by the same operator.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      No reason to require a single operator, you just need a shared "pot" to move money around. On-peak trains pay into the pot, off-peak trains get money from it.
- isostatic 8y ago
  Very few people don't take rail for the fun of it. People take rail to go somewhere, therefore the market is transport. The options for say Glasgow to London are Drive Coach (2 operators (national express, megabus) Fly (2 operators I think) Train (2 operators) That's 7 different options, each has pros and cons
makomk 8y ago
I don't think SNCF have any choice about separating train operations from rail track network maintenance and opening the network up to competition. It's an EU requirement, part of the fourth railway package. That's part of the reason there was talk of the UK not being able to renationalise their railways if we didn't leave the EU - it's increasingly requiring all states to structure their railways more like the UK system (because that worked so great for us!)
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  >That's part of the reason there was talk of the UK not being able to renationalise their railways // I thought we did effectively renationalise a portion of the network on the East Coast, and it was better [for users] and profitable in some sense [for the exchequer]? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/26/east-coast-mainline-why-privatise https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/26/east-coast-m... We have a lose-lose system in the UK AFAICT, we have a private system, and we subsidise it from taxation. So private companies get paid dividends, that they didn't earn, from tax money and we still get a fragmented and under-invested system.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    > profitable in some sense East coast made £100m a year for the exchequer Stagecoach promised £400m for the exchequer Clearly the latter is better for the exchequer, it means more subsidy can be spent on other areas of the network. The problem is that Grayling let stagecoach off their promises, undermining the whole point of privatization.
kmlx 8y ago
> It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. What about Japan? Aren't they running the best rail network in the world with 0 subsidies?
- mcny 8y ago
  I think New York needs to: 1. Cut costs. Lay off workers where possible. Cut wages and salaries across the board. 2. Increase taxes. There just isn't enough money. I've seen a lot of people jump the turnstile. I think we can't emulate Japan's model in the US. Japan is very homogeneous from what I can tell. We are decidedly not. Any attempt to strict enforcement will lead to hiring people who are attracted to such jobs and think it is their duty to rid society of "scum".
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Public rail is only a money losing venture if you consider that ticket sales is the only benefit it provides and that those need to fully cover the exploitation. If that were the case, rip out the subways in any US city, shut down the airports, break up the highways (who pays for those?), etc. Most of that kind of infrastructure does not happen without tax payer money. The reality is that the economic side effects of connecting cities with each other such that people can travel easily between them facilitates a lot of business to happen. Having access to infrastructure such as working internet, good housing and health care, public transport, etc. are per-requisites for running any successful business. In France, the high speed rail network which has been there for decades now has meant that a lot of business trips to major French cities can be done in a single business day without requiring lots of planes to fly. That makes a lot of difference for cities that are far from Paris. Also it means that getting to Paris from anywhere in France is typically easy and straightforward.
peterbraden 8y ago
SBB in Switzerland is also profitable
- hestefisk 8y ago
  And they have nice high speed trains too. And reasonable prices for residents. It runs like a (Swiss) clockwork.
m0zg 8y ago
I wanted to travel by rail from Zurich to Paris earlier this year, and as it happens, ended up in Zurich when SNCF was on strike. So I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get back in time and had to cancel the trip. From what I hear this happens relatively frequently there. A train which you're not sure if it runs our not on any given day has somewhat limited utility IMO.

titanix2 8y ago

> It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. I think this is mandated by the EU. And it could be a good thing. I'm personally fed up to be treated like a thief when I forgot composting my ticket (which happen because there is not gate to access the rails) or when I could not buy it in the first place (some station doesn't have have vending machines). Also the price lottery for TGV tickets is infuriating (price goes from 14€ to 140€ for the ride I take the most) and the commercial strategy of the SNCF is to offer cheap TGV which lacks any confort to kind of punish you not buying the more expensive option. But actually I would even be happier if we import all the working staff from Japan and make them the whole thing working smoothly under a join JR-France company.

ambicapter 8y ago
For english speakers, "composting" here means punching a ticket. I never understood where the word came from, and I'm a native French speaker.
- bane 8y ago
  Wow, thanks for that. I can't find a definition in an English dictionary that was able to make sense of that. It appears to have etymology in Old French composte which comes from Latin "composita" or "compositum" which means something like "something put together". Even crazier I can't figure out how we arrive at the modern meaning of decaying vegetables to make soil...but I can arrive at how we got to "composite" which seems to have different but similar roots.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    > Even crazier I can't figure out how we arrive at the modern meaning of decaying vegetables to make soil... The etymology I see all mentions "composte" as "mixture of leaves, manure, etc., for fertilizing land", which suggests that it started as people using a *composita of manure and plant detritus together to ferment for fertilizer and the word sense shifted from referring to the specific mixture to the general composting process.
    - bane 8y ago
      Ahh, that makes sense.
- niea_11 8y ago
  Apparently the meaning doesn't come from the verb but from the italian word : "compositore" (according to wikitionary [1] and the larousse dictionary [2]) (again in [1]) "compositore" from italian is equivalent to "compositeur" in french which can mean "a person that writes music" but can also mean "a typographer or compositor". [1] : https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/composteur https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/composteur [2] : https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/composteur/17760 https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/composteur/17...
  - carlob 8y ago
    Funnily enough the word we use for stamping tickets in Italian is vidimare which comes from vidimus (seen) in Latin, so it's actually closer to visa in etymology.
glandium 8y ago
The JR service comes at a cost. Shinkansen tickets are vastly more expensive than TGV.
- titanix2 8y ago
  Yes it's a bit more expensive but the trains themselves are way more confortable, most of the time on schedule and drive at full operational speed all the time because they rails are made for it. With TGV on the other hand you have a few sections which are standard rails and thus you the train drive at a normal (low) speed...
  - mcv 8y ago
    More comfortable than the TGV? The train I'm most familiar with is the Thalys, the high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris, and I'm not sure if it's more comfortable than other TGVs, but it's always a joy to travel in. I recently went to London in the Eurostar, and they'd managed to make the train experience feel like a plane. Very disappointing.
    - kmlx 8y ago
      Having recently used both the TGV and the Tokaido Shinkansen, I'd say the Hikari line is much more comfortable than any of the TGV trains. Regarding the Eurostar, it works like that because the UK is not in Schengen. As such, border control needs to happen. Not to mention the potential issues with terrorism. And the Eurostar is net inferior to any of the Shinkansen trains.
      - mcv 8y ago
        The border checks absolutely added to the plane feeling of the experience, but Eurostar seats are also significantly more cramped than those of the Thalys.
      - GordonS 8y ago
        Can confirm, I've been on the TGV and also a few bullet trains in Japan - the bullet trains were practically luxurious in terms of comfort and space, and the service was fantastic. I also found the bullet trains to be great value, especially when compared to the expensive, uncomfortable, over-crowded, slow, dirty, late trains here in the UK.
isostatic 8y ago
> I think this is mandated by the EU. Not really, the EU is democratic, and generally there's skeptisism in the EU about a liberal rail market. The Fourth Railway Package explicity allows tracks and trains to be owned by a single holding company. The main point of the package was things like harmonising safety standards across europe (so if you wanted to run a train from london to warsaw you wouldn't need to get safety certification from UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Poland). It will mean that a given EU government can't use the rail industry as a way of hiding state aid to people/industries. If SNCF are good, that's fine, they continue. If DB come along and say they can run France's network for half the cost, then DB get the job. > I'm personally fed up to be treated like a thief when I forgot composting my ticket That's because you're not traveling with a valid ticket. Try driving off from the petrol station without paying, or boarding a plane without showing a boarding pass. > Also the price lottery for TGV tickets is infuriating It's demand led, like planes. > the commercial strategy of the SNCF is to offer cheap TGV which lacks any confort to kind of punish you not buying the more expensive option. So buy the more expensive one if you value the comfort.
- cowl 8y ago
  >That's because you're not travelling with a valid ticket. Try driving off from the petrol station without paying, or boarding a plane without showing a boarding pass. that's not even remotely close. I don't know exactly how it is in France but in Italy (and I suspect it's similar) I may have a monthly ticket clearly stating the validity FROM-TO, having my name on it and yet still if i don't time stamp it at the start of month i'm treated like a thief because bureaucracy says ALL tickets must be timestamped. WHY? how could i cheat with a named monthly subscription ticked? Ticket controllers not having to fear for their job don't even try to think and treat passengers with respect. Now that we have a private Operator the situation is a little bit better but still until we have laws that dictate nobody must do any effort to maintain the job it's not gonna be pretty. Now You may ask Why I don't simply time stamp it at the start of the month. Maybe i'm late and I miss my train But most of the time and in many stations the stamping machines do not work. courtesy of the same guaranteed monopoly Company.
  - 8y ago

jdietrich 8y ago

>UK tried this sort of thing and it left everyone with a shittier experience, though they could claim that they successfully privatized the industry -- everyone knows that's a total lie. Passenger volumes have more than doubled since privatisation, after a long period of stagnation under nationalisation. While walk-on fares have increased above the rate of inflation, advance fares are substantially cheaper. The supposed problems of the British rail network resemble that Yogi Berra quote - "nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21056703 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21056703 https://www.stagecoach.com/media/insight-features/the-facts-about-rail-fares.aspx https://www.stagecoach.com/media/insight-features/the-facts-...

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
That's really not a fair reflection. Privatisation came after nearly 20 years of Tory under investment and far from adequate under several administrations previously. It was, by the time of Major, a very predictable and well-worn trope. What better way to "prove" your lawn needs a private mowing service than barely mowing the lawn for a decade or two? It's quite easy to see why rolling stock was far beyond expected life. There was plenty wrong, many of which would have been resolved with adequate funding for newer rolling stock, routes, electrification and capacity. Investments that have come painfully slowly outside the South East, mostly with public funds, since privatisation. The cliche of terrible sandwiches was often true - well if you're being deprived of funds better to keep the train running than the sandwiches fresh. The meals in dining cars managed to stay pretty damn good. Far better than having a trolley service only, for instance. Major's privatisation was a case of "anything but this". Separating track, rolling stock and station building into three different companies was nuts. Public subsidy plummeted after privatisation, until inadequate maintenance was identified as cause of the Hatfield crash. Then reached never before seen peaks. They're still fiddling around to try and remove the systemic consequences of how it was privatised. Nothing that even slightly resembles the integrated transport The Netherlands can manage. Season tickets have increased in line with inflation, only because they were pegged by statute to inflation +/- 1%. On the day tickets, which didn't get that protection, have increased vastly in real terms. Don't forget the UK rushed to the car far more than European neighbours - Beeching etc - it's little surprise to see rail growing faster now we have gridlocked roads, having been pruned to almost non-existence. After 20 years it's not the disaster it might have been - mainly "thanks" to Hatfield - but it's far from a success. Especially outside the South East and on prices. Heaven help you if you ever use the trans Pennine. Seeing as this is on an article about TGV, just how is UK doing with high speed rail? Northern Powerhouse? Double decker trains?

Zombiethrowaway 8y ago

The French government passed a law in mid-2018 that ends the special "cheminot" contract for new hires. It will effectively grandfather the old way in 10-20 years, and make it smaller every year. So I don't think this is fair or accurate: "rather than addressing the fundamental issues (inability to fire people, change cost structure"

ldng 8y ago
Nor did that changed anything. Most employees are contractors nowadays. French politics must stop playing with trains and grow up. And fire the management that's been there for 10 years and made it worst.

agumonkey 8y ago

The sad part seems to be that: - track maintenance is lacking (at least by journalism investigation reports) - regional lines have shrunk, causing systemic back pressure on cars (partly fueling the yellow vest protests) I love the new TGV (regen braking) but it seems that holistically it's not a sure bet for the whole nation:

simula67 8y ago

> Public rail is a money-losing venture, in every country (except Hong Kong). That's what "public" means. But it's important to have Why ? I wish connectivity to airports here in India would improve and railways would just die

ehmorris 8y ago
I believe the Hong Kong metro owns and leases the land on top of its stations.
- pas 8y ago
  Also, density. Amtrak [and other big country networks] also has money making routes, but that money is nothing when it comes the losses that need to be offset on the other routes.
pas 8y ago
Why important? Because public rail makes it possible to connect city centers. Airports are biiiiiiig, noisy, airplanes pollute a lot, and take off and landing is slow. Sure, planes are faster than trains, but they are a lot less efficient. Yes, it's hard to manage, yes it needs "roads" (tracks), whereas planes have the air, but planes are very much a luxury.
adrianN 8y ago
For many connections that are less than 500km or so apart, a train is faster than a plane. A good rail network also connects smaller towns that don't have an airport. It can also be used to transport goods. All these uses would have to be replaced by cars and trucks if you'd only focus on planes, that's not very good for the environment.
- lultimouomo 8y ago
  Also, a 4 hour travel door-to-door on a plane means: * Half an hour to go to the airport * Half an hour passing security and waiting for boarding * 20 minutes between boarding and stable flight when you can start working on your laptop * One hour and 40 minutes when you can work cramped in a noisy environment with terrible air quality * 15 minutes descent and landing * 15 minutes deboarding and getting out of the airport * Half an hour to get where you need to be Same trip by train: * Half an hour till you are on the train * 3 hours working comfortably in a usually bigger space with ground level air pressure and very little noise * Half an hour to get where you need to be. Travel in reasonably modern trains is by far the best kind of business travel you can have today, IMO.

pathseeker 8y ago

>That's what "public" means. No, that's not what that means. "public" is just the only place a money-losing venture can continue in perpetuity. It's very easy for governments to have self-sustaining programs. They are still "public" but they bring in enough money to pay for themselves.

atoav 8y ago
Public means it is a service all citizen (aka the public) should benifit from. That doesn’t mean it is free of some sort of fee (see public libraries), but it also means it must be available to everyone (see public school). A good public train network returns a lot of money indirectly, because it keeps all sorts of people mobile and therefore makes it easier for them to fill free positions. And in some areas (e.g. in the Alps) a good rail service is a huge multiplicator for tourism which means a whole industry profits from a cheap and well working train network. The most important aspect of a public transport system is that it works well, is affordable and without disruptive changes can be so in 20 years time. The goal should be to reach these targets with efficiency. I am not convinced that privatized railways offer any benefit for the public — they tend to grab all sorts of public money while closing lines that leave part of the public isolated, because there is not much profit to be made. In practise this can be observed in multiple nations. And public train networks have competition: busses. In nations where people don’t rely as much on public transport (e.g. the US) it is only natural to come the conclusion that railways should be lead like private companies. People have cars anyways, gas is cheap, there is no real public transport network you need to compete with.

acchow 8y ago

Hong Kong's is profitable mostly because it is run as a real estate company. They acquire land before adding a metro station and then lease/sell the valuable land after adding the station. Why don't other cities do this?

distances 8y ago
I think all land within city limits should be publicly acquired with eminent domain before zoning and building of utilities. No reason to let the land value increase fall to private landowners when it's all due to build-up of public services. Better use the profits for maintaining the services.
- mcv 8y ago
  That's roughly the case in Amsterdam. All land is technically owned by the city, and homeowners lease it for 50 years. When the lease will run out is always a detail to pay attention to when buying a home.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    Leases that short must make getting a mortgage hard.
    - mcv 8y ago
      When the lease is about to run out, it means you need to reserve money for that, meaning the price of the house will be lower. I think you can still use the mortgage to pay for that lease. So overall it doesn't make much difference, it's just an extra thing to pay attention to, or you'll end up with unexpected costs.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        If the lease is set to expire in twenty years, can you know in advance how much it will cost to renew, so that you can include it in the mortgage? If so, then it doesn't really seem to help the city to capture the gains that may have accrued over those years. If not, what happens if the lease now costs much more and you can't afford it? Do you get kicked out of the house?

rswail 8y ago

"Public rail is a money-losing venture" So are public schools, public hospitals and national defence. But they are enablers of everything else that we do and the actual purpose of government and taxes. Public transport needs to be as efficient as it can be while providing the services needed. There are additional benefits like providing a training environment for trades, ensuring that a heavy engineering skillbase is maintained, social cohesiveness and equality of opportunity to remote populations etc.

taneq 8y ago
So you're saying that a publicly funded utility should provide some kind of beneficial service to the public? Like it's some kind of public service?
- deleted 8y ago
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dsfyu404ed 8y ago
The government should not be engaging in money losing ventures to provide services that private companies will provide at no cost (other than point of service cost) to taxpayers. If they want to run a jobs program then fine, run a jobs program. Don't pretend your jobs program is an infrastructure program though. I have no problem with the government spending tax money on things, that's kind of its job, but resources are not infinite (eventually you run out of other people's money). I know this is a much hated opinion among the HN demographic and I won't win internet brownie points for saying it but government should not be spending taxpayer money on services private entities are willing to provide. Government should spend its money on things private industry won't do (like social safety nets, education and funding R%D for things private industry doesn't care about).
- black_puppydog 8y ago
  > services that private companies will provide at no cost to taxpayers Like the private train companies that run around handing free rides to everyone?

otabdeveloper1 8y ago

> Public rail is a money-losing venture, in every country (except Hong Kong). Not in Russia. They had a $2 billion profit in 2017. It's also the third-largest rail company in the world, so yes, it can be done.

speedplane 8y ago
Not in Amtrak's Northeast corridor either. If Amtrak was run like a business, it could shut down a number of lines and become a cash-cow. But it decisively not run like a business.
tasubotadas 8y ago
How much of that is profit from industrial logistics (read moving oil), and which part of that are revenues from passengers?
cosmolev 8y ago
All this profit comes from freight operations. Passenger services are loss making.
- otabdeveloper1 8y ago
  No. Their passenger services had around $100 million in profits, according to their 2017 report. Much lower margins, of course, but still profitable.

speedplane 8y ago

> Public rail is a money-losing venture, ... But it's important to have. Just how much money-losing depends on the political environment and skill of the management. Arguably, all public rail should lose money. Quality transportation is a huge economic driver of regional economies. If a rail service is making money, it likely means governments are underinvesting in their own economies.

atoav 8y ago
It usually also means that public transport is too expensive for those who are in need of it the most (e.g. people who can’t afford a car or for whom owning a car doesn’t make any sense — which is arguably more common in Europe than the US)
close04 8y ago
It usually does. Actually I am not familiar with one example where public rail actually makes a profit, in real terms. All public rail systems I know or have read about are subsidized by the state either directly or via subsidizing the fare for the traveler (or both).
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Years ago I read an article where the author argued that between network effects and indirect beneficiaries of transportation services markets are extremely sub-optimal. Also the value of the service varies widely as well. One box contains a toaster anotherbox contains a vital part needed to get a machine shop back up and running.
- atoav 8y ago
  I think we should stop counting profit as “how much tickets you sold” minus “how much money you spent”, but look at the effects of a public train system on the whole economy. I grew up in the Alps and I can guarantee that certain very profitable touristic locations wouldn’t even remotely work if there was no affordable and reliable train network that connected them to a airport, unless you want to turn some alpine area into a huge parking lot. On the same line that connects that spot to the cities there might be ten completely uninteresting villages whose population kinda relies on these trains to e.g. go to school, go shopping in the city etc. Some lines might not have any touristic benefit, but they raise the value of the whole network because it increases the destinations you can reach via train. In nations that have high petrol prices and where train networks already exist, train networks can be unprofitable and still boost economy as a whole. The question is: should everybody finance everybody elses mobility to a certain degree when it benefits economy as a whole? For me the answer is quite clear. I grew up in small village in some valley in the alps. Without affordable public transport I would have been devastated as a teenager. A profitable train network usually takes that profit from somewhere and that somewhere is typically public. I’d rather have an unprofitable train network that works, paid by my taxes than a profitable that doesn’t work even if I were prepared to pay for it. Same goes for Internet, Mobile networks, Water, Electricity.

deleted 8y ago

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benj111 8y ago

"SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition" I'm guessing this is being imposed on SNCF by national and European government. In their defence they seem to be doing the right things. They're preparing for competition by lowering their costs etc. The proposed system of giving each region the power to grant a monopoly seems a bit ill considered though.

iagooar 8y ago

> cut the number of excessive public sector workers I remind you, that we're talking about France here, where firing people is very, very hard. And we're talking public sector here, which would be a huge offense there. Protests would be massive.

iagooar 8y ago
Why is this getting down voted? Did I say something wrong? Not saying I don't agree with what the author suggested.

ownagefool 8y ago

Err UK rail was famously terrible before "privatisation". Not that privatisation is the answer, nor that being public was at fault, but I'm not sure rewriting history is helpful. Looking at UK water companies being privatised so their owners can stuff them full of debt to get around the profit caps is probably a better case study. Profit percentage caps are silly because the obvious way to make more money is to make the entire service more expensive by wasting money, this increasing turnover, thus increasing the size of that 4%. Monopolies being privatised doesn't seem super helpful either, but hey, that's the UK for you.

elcomet 8y ago
I read in a lot of articles that it is actually more terrible for a lot of tracks after privatisation in the UK. What happens is that companies focus on the most profitable tracks, so the other ones are not well maintained. An example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/05/the-guardian-view-on-rail-privatisation-going-off-the-tracks https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/05/the-gu...
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  And when franchises change the outgoing franchisee just milks it for the last two years or so - which lead to the complete fracking disaster of the thames link.
- ownagefool 8y ago
  I'm not sure that article say's it's worse than pre-privatisation, just that it's not great now and they're right, I pay over £400 a month to sit on the floor for a train that turns up when it wants to. It's not exactly amazing. But, as a counter: https://www.ft.com/content/d192b1b4-458b-11e5-af2f-4d6e0e5eda22 https://www.ft.com/content/d192b1b4-458b-11e5-af2f-4d6e0e5ed... Now indeed, the terrible service in the past was most likely due to underfunding, but recent history suggests we'll consistently vote in a Government that starves national infrastructure then sell it off to it's mates, so it's hard to see public ownership lasting and resulting in success.
- nickik 8y ago

conjectures 8y ago

"It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition." This certainly didn't help in the UK. It's been a shameful saga with multiple failures and no clear rationale. The theory was: privatisation -> ??? -> uber efficiency. Ignoring the fact that the economic theory which usually fills in the ??? requires free entry and exit into the market. That doesn't exist in the case of natural monopolies like rail.

icebraining 8y ago
Assuming the railway itself is public and shared, as in this case, how is rail a natural monopoly?
- jnty 8y ago
  A key reason is that off-peak services are often subsidised by on-peak services, so to economically provide a good all-day service the whole thing needs to be provided by the same operator.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    No reason to require a single operator, you just need a shared "pot" to move money around. On-peak trains pay into the pot, off-peak trains get money from it.
isostatic 8y ago
Very few people don't take rail for the fun of it. People take rail to go somewhere, therefore the market is transport. The options for say Glasgow to London are Drive Coach (2 operators (national express, megabus) Fly (2 operators I think) Train (2 operators) That's 7 different options, each has pros and cons

makomk 8y ago

I don't think SNCF have any choice about separating train operations from rail track network maintenance and opening the network up to competition. It's an EU requirement, part of the fourth railway package. That's part of the reason there was talk of the UK not being able to renationalise their railways if we didn't leave the EU - it's increasingly requiring all states to structure their railways more like the UK system (because that worked so great for us!)

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
>That's part of the reason there was talk of the UK not being able to renationalise their railways // I thought we did effectively renationalise a portion of the network on the East Coast, and it was better [for users] and profitable in some sense [for the exchequer]? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/26/east-coast-mainline-why-privatise https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/26/east-coast-m... We have a lose-lose system in the UK AFAICT, we have a private system, and we subsidise it from taxation. So private companies get paid dividends, that they didn't earn, from tax money and we still get a fragmented and under-invested system.
- isostatic 8y ago
  > profitable in some sense East coast made £100m a year for the exchequer Stagecoach promised £400m for the exchequer Clearly the latter is better for the exchequer, it means more subsidy can be spent on other areas of the network. The problem is that Grayling let stagecoach off their promises, undermining the whole point of privatization.

kmlx 8y ago

> It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. What about Japan? Aren't they running the best rail network in the world with 0 subsidies?

mcny 8y ago
I think New York needs to: 1. Cut costs. Lay off workers where possible. Cut wages and salaries across the board. 2. Increase taxes. There just isn't enough money. I've seen a lot of people jump the turnstile. I think we can't emulate Japan's model in the US. Japan is very homogeneous from what I can tell. We are decidedly not. Any attempt to strict enforcement will lead to hiring people who are attracted to such jobs and think it is their duty to rid society of "scum".

jillesvangurp 8y ago

Public rail is only a money losing venture if you consider that ticket sales is the only benefit it provides and that those need to fully cover the exploitation. If that were the case, rip out the subways in any US city, shut down the airports, break up the highways (who pays for those?), etc. Most of that kind of infrastructure does not happen without tax payer money. The reality is that the economic side effects of connecting cities with each other such that people can travel easily between them facilitates a lot of business to happen. Having access to infrastructure such as working internet, good housing and health care, public transport, etc. are per-requisites for running any successful business. In France, the high speed rail network which has been there for decades now has meant that a lot of business trips to major French cities can be done in a single business day without requiring lots of planes to fly. That makes a lot of difference for cities that are far from Paris. Also it means that getting to Paris from anywhere in France is typically easy and straightforward.

peterbraden 8y ago

SBB in Switzerland is also profitable

hestefisk 8y ago
And they have nice high speed trains too. And reasonable prices for residents. It runs like a (Swiss) clockwork.

m0zg 8y ago

I wanted to travel by rail from Zurich to Paris earlier this year, and as it happens, ended up in Zurich when SNCF was on strike. So I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get back in time and had to cancel the trip. From what I hear this happens relatively frequently there. A train which you're not sure if it runs our not on any given day has somewhat limited utility IMO.