The battle over the French Sleepers

A good example of how breaking up the railway to highlight the supposed costs can lead to damaging side effects is the announcement by SNCF, the French stateowned railway, that it wants to find an operator for the bulk of its Sleeper trains or else it will close them.

I have made use of these Sleepers on numerous occasions to reach ski resorts in the Alps. You can leave London on an afternoon Eurostar, have a steak frites in Paris, and be on the slopes by 1000. Sure, the rolling stock is quite old and the toilets basic, but they provide a wonderful service and are very heavily patronised with thousands of people leaving Paris on a Friday night. They are far more environmentally friendly than the alternatives of flight or car, yet SNCF is arguing that they are uneconomic, claiming they need a subsidy of 100 euros per passenger.

This is a typical lack of holistic thinking, and comes down to a narrow view of railway economics. SNCF is arguing that it is the high track access charges that require this subsidy, but Mark Smith, the Man at Seat 61, says this is the wrong way to calculate the costs: “If these trains are discontinued the industry as a whole doesn’t escape the track charges. These are non-escapable costs and shouldn’t really be included as a cost for running the train. The track access costs for signalling, maintenance and staff remain exactly the same in total, so there isn’t actually going to be any saving.” He reckons the only real costs are the driver, guard and other staff, the power… and bed linen!

SNCF has already downgraded the service, scrapping the First Class where people had just two berths in their compartment, which cut out lucrative high-paying passengers. Now it wants to kill the trains off altogether, the kind of tactic reminiscent of British Rail.

There is a petition online to save these services, which you can find at https:// www. change. org/ p/ sncf- save- the- frenchsleeper-trains.