The tortuous administrative path that the French regulators have submitted to Renfe arrives at the destination station. On July 13, the high-speed trains of the Spanish public operator will finally begin to circulate alone in French territory, once the branch is open there and they can begin to sell tickets. In this way, the routes that were lost when its French counterpart, the SNCF, decided to break the cooperation agreement they had to operate between the two countries will be recovered.
First they will do it from Barcelona to Lyon, with a daily service in each direction from Friday to Monday, although the inauguration will be brought forward to Thursday, July 13. That day will be the first time that a Spanish train driver will provide commercial service in French territory. Symbolically, Renfe has chosen one of the most important long weekends in France, which celebrates its national holiday the following day.
Two weeks later, on July 28, the route from Madrid to Marseille will be added, also with daily circulation on weekends, so that Barcelona and Mediterranean cities in the south of France will have two trains per day and in each direction. As of October, they will circulate every day of the week.
The entry into service of these trains has a component of international relations between Spain and France, although for Renfe what is truly relevant is the entry as one more actor for the French. Just as SNCF competes in the Madrid-Barcelona corridor with the low-cost Ouigo trains, Renfe wants to do the same for domestic trips from Perpignan to Lyon and Marseille with their intermediate stops: Narbonne, Béziers, Montpellier, Nimes (in both cases). , Valence (on the route to Lyon) and Avignon, Aix-en-Provence (on the route to Marseille).
This commitment to French travelers is demonstrated by the aggressive pricing policy with which tickets will go on sale from June 21, more typical of a low-cost company: nine euros for journeys that have origin and destination in the French country. Those that are international, on the other hand, will start from 19 to the intermediate stops and 29 euros to the terminals.
Renfe does not hide that its objective is set far beyond Lyon and Marseille. “Seeing the athletes arrive at the Olympic Games in Paris on a Renfe train would be nice,” said the president of the company, Raül Blanco.
The road ahead to achieve this will not be easy, even less than what it has meant to recover the permits for the trains that circulated in France under the cooperation model with SNCF and that from one day to the next had to finally stop doing so of the joint venture between the two operators that from next month will compete in Spain and France. The corridor between Lyon and Paris would be the equivalent of the Spanish Barcelona-Madrid, where the juiciest business is located, and the French authorities will do everything possible to delay the entry of competition within the framework of liberalization of the sector throughout Europe.
