> One issue with France is that their train system is very Paris-centric.

I mean it's not just the rail network; it's _all_ of France. Some of that is unsurprising given a 1/5th of the population live in Paris and the surrounding area. A significant amount of business travel from outside of Paris resultantly ends up being to Paris.

There's definitely an argument that investing in infrastructure that isn't centred on Paris may help change how Paris-centric the country generally is, but that's a much harder sell politically.

(And something like Bordeaux to Lyon needs to cross the Massif Central, which will significantly increase the cost of construction, which potentially makes it even less likely to happen.)

« (And something like Bordeaux to Lyon needs to cross the Massif Central, which will significantly increase the cost of construction, which potentially makes it even less likely to happen.) »

Indeed. Currently by train, Bordeaux to Lyon would either go via Paris, or via Toulouse/Montpellier. Building train lines across the Massif Central doesn't really make economic sense due to the sparse population density.

The lines exists. There is a project of a cooperative rail company who want to exploit this route with the existing infrastructure.

https://www.railcoop.fr/ (in french)

Though note from Wikipedia (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_de_Lyon_à_Bordeaux) the projected journey time is 6h47, whereas going via Paris (and crossing by Metro) takes around 5h52, and there are a few connections via Massy TGV taking around 5h31.

That said, I think this exactly shows one of the benefits of liberialisation of the rail market: it allows other companies to serve routes that the nationalised operator does not want to.

> That said, I think this exactly shows one of the benefits of liberialisation of the rail market: it allows other companies to serve routes that the nationalised operator does not want to.

It really does not. Private companies won’t invest in the un-profitable routes that are the most important for half the country. Instead, they’ll eat into the margins of the established companies on high profit main lines, which are used to subsidise secondary lines at the moment. So either we’ll need more public subsidies and incentives, or these routes just won’t be served. It’s good if Railcoop can keep the route open (supported by local councils, so public money), but this won’t redeem the privatisation project overall. Doing this for all important secondary routes will be more expensive than a well-run public operator Train service is a public service.

Is cross-subsidy really the best way to fund unprofitable routes, though? It makes sense if you view the state's rail budget as something that needs to be balanced in and of itself, but that's a matter of government accounting, moving where the revenue comes from, rather than a business in its own right.

Relying on cross-subsidy you're essentially overcharging those taking the profitable lines, versus raising the subsidy required through general taxation. At least in the majority of cases, I'd expect cross-subsidy to be a form of regressive tax, quite possibly skewed towards middle-income groups.

And it's not like those taking the profitable routes are getting disproportionate benefit from the unprofitable ones; the benefit from maintaining the unprofitable routes is derived from both the local economy and through benefiting the national economy, and as such it makes sense that it come from general taxation rather than fare-box revenue from profitable routes.

> Is cross-subsidy really the best way to fund unprofitable routes, though? It makes sense if you view the state's rail budget as something that needs to be balanced in and of itself, but that's a matter of government accounting, moving where the revenue comes from, rather than a business in its own right.

I think you’re right. It’s just that we’ve been brainwashed into seeing our state-owned companies as normal companies that need to turn a profit. From that point of view it makes sense for high-margin routes to subsidise unprofitable ones. But a state does not have to balance the books the same way.

Subsidising smaller routes directly from the State budget works as well, and results in lower fares overall, at the expense of a bit more in taxes.

Subsidising private companies operating these routes, however, is a recipe for disaster. These companies expect a profit and would cut any corner to pocket the subsidies instead of doing their job. This is how it (mostly) works in the U.K., and it is terrible and expensive.

> Subsidising private companies operating these routes, however, is a recipe for disaster. These companies expect a profit and would cut any corner to pocket the subsidies instead of doing their job. This is how it (mostly) works in the U.K., and it is terrible and expensive.

While I might defend the EU's push for rail liberalisation in general, I'm certainly not going to defend the historic GB model (Northern Ireland was never privatised, and the model of franchises carrying the revenue risk is gone from GB[1], killed slightly sooner than it would've been due to the pandemic).

That said, note a significant part of the reason why GB ends up with higher fares is much higher cross-subsidy and much lower reliance on the State budget than elsewhere in Western Europe. We've year-on-year had above inflation fare rises (and note that the rises have always been limited by Government; had there been a desire to set a lower (or no!) fare rise Government could have done so) combined with decreases in subsidy. This is highly unlikely to change even with the demise of franchises as we currently know them, as the Government desire to reduce subsidy is likely to continue.

So the GB model did achieve its stated goal: moving revenue risk to the private sector and decreasing subsidy.

The failings of prior franchises—and whether or not they're terrible—is a long and varied topic. Ultimately, they by and large delivered the service they were contracted to. There's ways in which this is an issue with the specification of the tender, and ways in which it's inherently a downside. Many of the complaints have some of their origins in Government intervention, it must be said: rolling stock acquisition was very tightly controlled from the 2000s onwards, inconsistent and often changing electrification plans, and infrastructure in many places running near capacity.

That's not to say the franchisees did nothing wrong, but often they had their hands tied in many, many ways: and often much tighter tied than British Rail ever did.

I'll argue to the end that the biggest mistake was selling off all of British Rail; elsewhere in the EU having the incumbent survive has almost certainly provided a more beneficial competitive environment.

[1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rail-franchising-reaches-...

also, France has been Paris centric since well, forever? the French bureaucracy and political system is very centralised and has been since the French revolution. this directly ties into the idea of the state as an institution in French culture in a lot of subtle ways aswell.

> ... and has been since the French revolution

Even before.

> ... his directly ties into the idea of the state as an institution in French culture in a lot of subtle ways aswell.

Especially in the parisian elites disdain toward pretty much anybody else in the country.

ps: exiled french/parisian speaking.

This is kind of an intrinsic problem with transport that needs infrastructure along the whole route (i.e. trains and cars). You need a minimum amount of travel along a route for it to be worth it to construct and maintain that infrastructure. The system naturally evolves to a hub-and-spoke model.

Planes just need infrastructure at both ends, so it's a lot easier to create a point-to-point model.

It's far from just the infrastructure, if you're looking at HSR; Bordeaux to Lyon as an aviation route is mostly served by E190's, each seating 100 people, whereas a TGV Réseau seats 377 (which I believe is the lowest capacity of any current TGV). Clearly the train can have the advantage of intermediate stops, but you're starting off with much higher capacity to fill.

And sure, you could build a very short train, but a lot of the efficiencies of rail are built on transporting large numbers of people at once.

I'm surprised they're running jets instead of turboprops, but maybe fuel efficiency is too high in my mind.

Only Chalair runs a small handful of ATRs.

Air France Hop and easyJet, the two operators of the route, only fly jets. In the Hop case, post-pandemic they'll be operating ERJs and E-Jets; in the easyJet case, they'll be operating A320 family aircraft.

Note that Hop did have various ATR 42/72s until 2019/20, when they got rid of their (fairly recent) ATR 72-600s. It is perhaps surprising that they now are jet-only, but at least pre-pandemic the plan was for them to long-term be operating only CRJ1000 and E-190s, both of which are notably larger than the largest turboprops on the market. I don't know what their average sector length is, but it's certainly not implausible that the fuel efficiency per passenger isn't that much worse (and easyJet's A320s almost certainly beat any turboprop on a per passenger basis given their average loadings).

You’ll end up main connections and smaller ones to reach smaller destinations. This doesn’t mean it needs a single center like Paris. Compare the map to Germany where there are roughly 3 parallel fast North-South lines not focused on a single center.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe#/m...

Population in France is much more concentrated around Paris than population in Germany is. The Paris metro area accounts for 20% of France's population, while you need the biggest three metro areas in Germany to get to that percentage. Also Germany has double the population density, so even the less dense parts have more people.

It's actually not just population density. A big part of it is economic and bureaucratic activity. In France everything is centred around Paris, in Germany that's very different, e.g. Berlin is not a very big economic hub (although that's changing somewhat).

> Also Germany has double the population density, so even the less dense parts have more people.

That is not causal.

Some countries have a higher population density, but the population is mostly concentrated in one area and the low density areas are really low density.

I presume there is a standard way to compare density distributions between countries.

This is caused in large part by the French economy and transportation needs largely being Paris-centric--the Paris metro is larger than the next 10 largest cities combined.

(Admittedly, a Bordeaux-Toulouse-Montpelier-Marseille-Nice connection in the south is probably a viable TGV route. But at a quick glance, that's probably the only viable non-via-Paris route I see.)

Lyon-Strasbourg (and Germany beyond) would be useful too. Most of the high speed line is built already anyway.

I don’t know if you count them as “Paris-centric” or not, but Lyon-Lille via Marne-la-Vallée, or Lyon-Nantes via Massy are important as well.

Are there direct flights though?

I did Rennes-Toulouse multiple times (it was actually the example I was going to give in this thread). It's 10 hours by train, 2 hours by plane. So as long as there are no direct trains, if flying was to be banned, there would be no short way to do Rennes-Toulouse anymore.

Interior flights will be banned only in case of a train alternative inferior to 2.30h.

> Nous avons choisi [le seuil en train de] 2h30 car 4 heures, ça vient assécher des territoires souvent enclavés comme le grand Massif central... Ce serait inique sur le plan de l'équité des territoires" [1]

> We have chosen 2.30h instead of 4h, because of enclaved territories like Massif Central. It would have been inequal for the territories equity. [approximately translated]

[1] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/environnement/convention-c...

According to the article, the law is banning routes that have a fast train alternative so I'd imagine that's fine.