Thread by @jonworth

Earlier @Felyxorez pointed me to this in Le Monde about bosses of railway companies demanding "un nouveau pacte ferroviaire européen" 👇
lemonde.fr/economie/artic…

It's a summary of the main piece in Le Journal du Dimanche (no paywall if you accept ads)👇
lejdd.fr/Economie/sncf-…

First, the content

Honestly it's 🤷‍♂️

A load of we're green, we're the good guys, bla bla. Heard it all before. No concrete demands, no concrete plans

"Pour que le train soit plus attractif, nous nous engageons à améliorer l’expérience client : de la réservation à l’information voyageur en temps réel grâce au numérique, ainsi que pour l’offre ferroviaire internationale, y compris de nuit."

That's LOL funny. From SNCF!?

That's not to say they don't have plenty of self confidence, these signatories. "Ce pacte ferroviaire est une première victoire pour le rail européen."

F**k, you signed a letter. Big victory guys!

Although interestingly this pact is not an initiative of @CER_railways - they're probably rather put out that a different grouping of predominantly state railways can put out anodyne statements. Muscling into CER's territory. Whatever next?

"Pour transformer cette victoire du rail européen en une victoire européenne, nous avons besoin des États membres et de l’Union européenne. Nous les appelons à soutenir ce pacte en s’engageant à fixer des objectifs de report modal clairs au niveau national."

Err, EU or national?

Second, the list of signatories is also interesting

The state railways of 🇫🇷🇩🇪🇨🇭🇦🇹🇵🇹🇩🇰🇳🇱🇱🇺🇭🇺🇧🇪🇫🇮🇮🇹🇸🇮 have signed

But interestingly 🇪🇸🇵🇱🇨🇿 are not there

Then there are SNCF subsidiaries Eurostar, Thalys

And operators of lines SNCF runs on Lisea and HS1

Getlink that runs the Channel Tunnel

And freight operators from 🇷🇴🇸🇰🇸🇪🇧🇪

And the infra manager from 🇵🇹

And BLS from 🇨🇭

So basically rail is green, we all want to tell you rail is green, and we want the EU and its member states (but we don't know which really) to set some targets and bung us some money.

And we want to frame that as a great leap forward.

I'm only going to take initiatives like this seriously once railways themselves have started to get their own houses in order.

Decent cross border booking sites

No price discrimination based on language (yes, you, @SNCFconnect!)

Sensible timetables at Port Bou-Cèrbere and Maubeuge-Mons

More trains Figueras-Perpignan

Through trains Hendaye-Irùn, and local trains Modane-Bardonecchia

I could go on...

But yeah, I suppose it's easier to write a wishy washy pact, and get Le Monde to cover it, and I presume get the French government to speak gushingly about it this coming week than it is *to actually begin to fix the many problems railways face*

But sure, those are always *someone else's* problems, right?

/ends