Eight million tickets were sold for the months of July and August, “10 % more than in 2019,” said the CEO of the railway company on Thursday, Jean-Pierre Farandou.
Le Monde with AFP
“We left for a record summer”, according to Jean-Pierre Farandou, the CEO of the SNCF. The railway company “has already sold eight million tickets for July and August, it is 10 % more than in 2019, so we see a very strong push,” said Farandou on France 2 Thursday, June 23, Specifying that the SNCF would “set up 500,000 additional places in the face of this success”.
“We are blocking, we add oars, we make double compositions with two trains at the same time,” he added, greeting the mobilization of railway workers to ensure the departure on vacation of the French, that He called to take the train rather than their car by “citizen concern”. The trains are, according to Mr. Farandou, complete on the days of great departure but “there are still places” outside these periods.
strike movements
Different strike movements are currently agitating the SNCF, notably in Ile-de-France with traffic disturbed by work that causes last minute changes on the drivers’ schedules, denounced by unions. Salary claims have also been added to protests.
Asked about these movements, Mr. Farandou recognized a “difficult period”, especially in the Paris region for users and drivers, and said that discussions with the social partners were “engaged” with “all options” on the table. “I try to practice a social dialogue of solution and construction and not too much a social dialogue of obstruction (…) which penalizes users and customers,” he said, reporting a social climate ” A little tense but not only at the SNCF “, especially due to the difficulties relating to purchasing power.
Regarding the increase in the price of tickets for users, which face inflation, the CEO declared that it would be “contradictory to want to develop traffic and have high prices” and that , despite the rise in the price of electricity, the repercussion on the costs for the SNCF would not be “not too high” in 2022 thanks to purchases made in advance. “For 2023, the question will arise”, according to Mr. Farandou.