Almost daily incidents, causing cascading delays and cancellations. For regular users of the SNCF Normandy lines, the summer of 2022 will remain a bad memory. “Nightmare”, summarizes Karine Courteaud, president of the Association for the Defense of Normandy Railway Users (Adurn).
This is not the first time that the Norman rail service has been discussed. In recent months, despite the gradual replacement of the old Corail trains with new Omneo trains, travelers using the “Nomad” network have experienced multiple setbacks. So much so that the president of the region, Hervé Morin, has twice suspended his payments to the SNCF since 2020.
“There are often problems on the Normandy lines,” confirms Karine Courteaud. “But this summer, it was every day. We had never experienced that.” Signal failure, change failure, animal strike, track obstruction, catenary incident… By our count, approximately 70 incidents caused one or more train delays and/or cancellations between July 1 and August . 20 on interregional lines (Caen-Rouen, Caen-Cherbourg, Rouen-Dieppe…) and the so-called Krono+ lines (Paris Saint-Lazare – Le Havre, Paris Saint-Lazare – Cherbourg, Paris Saint Lazare – Deauville, etc.) . That’s more than one incident per day on average.
Works and heat wave
Users point directly to the responsibility for the extension works of the RER E from Paris to Mantes-la-Jolie. This project involved the closure of the group 5 tracks, between Paris and Mantes de Poissy, until then used by Norman trains to or from the capital. These same trains have been changed to group 6 tracks (Paris-Mantes, via Conflans Ste-Honorine) already used by Transilien trains and freight trains.
In addition to a longer journey time of around three-quarters of an hour for Norman travellers, this diversion “generated additional trains with already heavy traffic” from Ile-de-France trains, Adurn lamented in July.
More than the works, the SNCF invokes the heat wave to justify some of the breakdowns. Between July 10 and 19, the railway company registered twenty incidents on the Normandy network, 95% of which were linked to “problems of overheating of infrastructures or electrical installations”, explained the public company in West of France.
On this point, Jean-Baptiste Gastinne says that Normandy faced the same problems as other regions “with the impact of high temperatures on infrastructure”. However, he acknowledges that the Norman network “has perhaps suffered more than elsewhere”. “We depend on facilities that are aging, that have not been renovated in recent years,” adds the vice president. Before saluting “the investment of the SNCF Réseau railway workers who had to identify faults of 42 degrees in the shade”.
“Intolerable travel conditions”
If the Region has not hesitated to question the SNCF for the interruption of Norman rail transport in the last two years, Jean-Baptiste Gastinne believes that this time it is difficult to establish “responsibility”.
The four associations for the defense of Norman users are not convinced. In a joint press release published on July 20, they warned of “intolerable travel conditions” and deplored the lack of anticipation of the Region and the SNCF: “Since Monday, July 11, not one morning, not one night without Major delays and chain cancellations!(…) For several months, we had warned the Region and SNCF of the risks that “summer work would entail” for training users, especially since any failure in the line would cause the paralysis of traffic, no longer having the possibility of diverting trains to the other bank of the Seine”.
“People were exhausted”
However, the passengers on the Nomad trains had not reached the end of their sentences. Despite the alert launched by the associations at the end of July, the failures persisted and the days without interruptions were the exception. “I took the train again at the beginning of August. Between the 1st and the 15th, there was not a day when I was on time,” says Karine Courteaud, a regular user of the Rouen-Paris line.
The Granville-Paris line was not spared a major signal box failure that brought traffic to a standstill for three days between 8 and 11 August. Bad luck: On August 9, a backhoe accident that hit the tracks brought train traffic to a standstill for one morning on the Paris-Cherbourg line.
Right of withdrawal
Obviously, not all the incidents that occurred on the Normandy lines are attributable to the SNCF. According to the railway company, between August 8 and 14, more than a quarter of the breakdowns were due to external events (abandoned luggage, collisions with animals, personal accidents, people on the tracks, etc.). But more than half were linked to the “Network Manager” (railway facilities, works, etc.), some of them due to the high temperatures, and the rest directly to the trains (equipment, driving, etc.).
Still, the SNCF claims fairly honorable punctuality rates. According to her, 90.2% of Norman trains were punctual within 5 minutes between August 8 and 14 and 84.7% of peak trains. Stable figures in general throughout the summer, but whose publication made users jump: “It’s funny, but the feeling of the traveler and the staff on board is not the same. It is the limit of ‘insolence to give us these figures to the view of everything ‘. we’ve been going on and on for weeks’, the Association for the Defense of Normand Railway Users reacted on Twitter In fact, the eliminated trains are not taken into account in these calculations.
On August 14, the situation worsened further with a new traffic interruption on the Paris-Normandy lines. Not because of a breakdown this time, but because of a right of withdrawal exercised by the SNCF commercial agents, overwhelmed by the “recrudescence of outrages” towards the workforce.
“Attacks on staff multiply in silence, users’ nerves give way to indifference, delays multiply and become normal, they give us superb punctuality figures, everything goes wrong,” denounces Adurn. And to add: “The workforce is suffering from the situation, the users are morphing, they tell us all that everything is fine and that they are exceptional events (remember the heat wave)!” For its part, the Paris-Caen-Cherbourg Users’ Union (UDUPC) deplored the “unacceptable” attacks and asked the SNCF management to “listen to the agents’ grievances” because “we all suffer them!”
Insufficient compensation for associations
Given the discontent of the passengers, the SNCF made a commercial gesture at the end of July offering compensation of up to 40 euros to all travelers affected by an incident between July 10 and 20, during the heat wave episode. And this “regardless of the initial price of your ticket or the reason for your dissatisfaction.”
An inadequate response to user associations denouncing compensation reserved only for occasional travelers, while subscribers have not received compensation despite their request. “As occasional travelers get stuff, subscribers have been advised to fill out a complaint form for every malfunction: this can make things happen. For the past few months, subscribers have felt disrespected. Relationships are breaking down.” complicating a lot,” lamented Pierre Dumont. president of the UDUPC, with France 3 Normandy.
The user associations ended up meeting with the Region and SNCF on September 7. On this occasion, they will claim “50% compensation for subscribers with active subscription in July and August”. For the railway company, this meeting will make it possible to decide “collectively on what we do or do not do in terms of compensation,” Juliette De Beaupuis, director of territorial relations for the Normandy lines, told Actu.fr. “We never closed the door. We always said we would wait for the summer to pass,” adds Jean-Baptiste Gastinne.
The issue of compensation will not be the only one addressed. The associations also want the SNCF and the Region to return to the compulsory reservation introduced on July 1 with the “return of the car in free placement”. Finally, they intend to express their dissatisfaction for other inconveniences that have occurred even before the summer works. Among them: the decision in March to withdraw 19 trains between Paris and Normandy – a decision that is only temporary, the Region assures – due to lack of sufficient assistance, problems with toilets unusable for a week on the Paris-Rouen line or other failure . respect the compositions of the trains.
A “new line” project
After 15 août, the trains normands ont retrouvé leur itinéraire et leur temps de trajet habituales alors que les travaux Eole ont pris fin en semaine: “On a senti les esprits s’apaiser”, assure Karine Courteaud, avec des retards moins nombreux selon she. On the other hand, work will continue on weekends, announcing new interruptions (train cancellations, schedule changes, etc.).
If Jean-Baptiste Gastinne says that he “understands the anger” of the user associations after a difficult summer, he also wants to highlight the improvements of recent months on the Normandy network, in particular thanks to the new Omneo trains. “Part of the investments have paid off: in the first half of 2019, 68% of Normandy trains left Paris Saint-Lazare on time, in the first half of 2022 it was 87%.
With Corsica, Normandy is the only region in metropolitan France not served by the TGV service. And now he is paying the price: “We suffer from the ‘all TGV’ policy that has resulted in insufficient investment in recent years…” laments Jean-Baptiste Gastinne. As a result, travel times between Paris and Cherbourg (excluding extensions linked to summer work), Paris and Le Havre or even Paris and Rouen are now longer than they were in the 1970s.
Relaunched in 2008, the project for a new Paris-Normandy line foresees significant work in the coming years to shorten travel times between the capital and the main centers of Normandy. A Paris-Caen could thus last 1h35, compared to 2 hours today (excluding extensions linked to summer work). Beyond “going faster, the goal is to have a more reliable and robust system”, explains Jean-Baptiste Gastinne. “But things are going too slowly,” admits the vice president, while the project is only in the study and consultation phases. According to him, the declaration of public utility should not intervene before 2025, and the concrete realization before 2032.
Source: BFM TV
