Saturday 09 June 2007
The train changes life. It changes geography. It changes France and it opens Europe. The TGV [Train Grand Vitesse: high speed train] East has just happily completed the modernization of the national rail network begun thirty years ago, first towards Lyon and the South, then the North, then the West and Southwest. Champagne, Lorraine and Alsace will in their turn enjoy 320km/hour trips.
The TGV is a French success. A centralizing construct, it brings the provinces closer to Paris. A star-shaped construct emanating from the capital. A construct that resulted from the 1970s' "great programs," it mobilized a big nationalized company, the SNCF, and private giants like Alstom. At a moment when the French model is failing in many subjects, beginning with unemployment, the French may talk about their TGV with pride. Besides, it makes them dream: Strasbourg two hours and twenty minutes from Paris, Marseilles in three hours.... High speed is a great luxury within everyone's reach. Along the way, it restructures work and living spaces, contributing to the revivification of regions in difficulty. For the East, suffering as it does the crises of old industry, this advent is welcome.
Like the line that leads to Belgium and the one that, passing underneath the Channel, attaches Great Britain to the continent, the TGV East brings France closer to her great German friends. Frankfurt is three hours and 50 minutes away, and Stuttgart and Munich lie beyond. The connection is complete with ICE, the German high speed train, and the two types of machine will, moreover, cohabit - in healthy competition as per the European model. The train is a useful tool of this citizens' Europe, of this "Show-me Europe" that it is so urgent to promote at this time.
The TGV is also, in these heated times, a formidable economizer of carbon dioxide. It emits five times less greenhouse gases than a car and sixty-six times less than a plane for a Paris-Strasbourg trip.
All these advantages do not amount to a miracle. The high speed train alone is not enough to restore a future to sick employment centers. On the contrary, the TGV - a modern tool - can accentuate geographic and economic inequalities.
That can be observed just by looking at the much-increased ticket prices. Speed pays its way, pleads the SNCF, which adds that it has implemented a whole panoply of ticket types so that everyone, under specified conditions, can enjoy this train. But that doesn't change the fact that the average ticket price is about to increase by 25 percent.
Another fracture is opened by the new tracks: They separate the TGV from all other regional and metropolitan trains. The SNCF has two speeds, as, too often still and in spite of the last years' concerted efforts, does railway France.
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