We will have to be patient. The Christmas holidays begin this Friday, December 22 and many French people will join their loved ones in the Alps or elsewhere. Consequences: the roads will be saturated while the SNCF supply is considered insufficient, notably by certain ski resort mayors.
Others, who chose to go across the Channel to celebrate the end of year holidays, had quite a scare yesterday with the surprise Eurostar strike. According to the unions, arguing in particular for “result-bearing” discussions with their management, the tunnel was able to reopen and traffic resume this Friday.
Difficult traffic on the highways
Bison Futé plans red in the direction of departures from this Friday afternoon from Paris and Lyon. “The French have almost no choice but to take the car: the lack of trains to reach the resorts is glaring,” regrets the president of the national association of mayors of mountain resorts (ANMSM) and mayor of La Plagne (Savoie) Jean-Luc Boch.
This year booking trends, stimulated by good snow, are up 2 to 3% compared to 2022, according to ANMSM. Saturday December 23, traffic will be just as difficult in the direction of departures. Île-de-France will still be in the red, and the entire territory remains in orange according to the road information site. The only area for improvement: Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes will return to orange. Sunday will mark the return of green in the direction of departures and returns.
At the SNCF “impossible to find a last minute train”
The mayors of ski resorts, including Jean-Yves Pachod, mayor of Courchevel (Savoie) and vice-president of the ANMSN, denounce a penalizing “train shortage”. “Already the situation is hardly ideal for pushing our customers towards the TGV, these conditions have not helped anything: we had no trains at all for the start of the season”. For his part, Jean-Luc Boch assures that it was “impossible to find a train at the last minute to go skiing”.
Elected officials and professionals in the sector say they have asked the public authorities and the SNCF to increase the number of trains in circulation. For its part, the SNCF ensures that on winter holiday weekends, “the TGV fleet is fully mobilized”, with “the maximum number of trains available” made available “using the entire capacity of the line” (all carriers combined).
Nine million French people go to the French Alps each year to ski, but only 0.5% of them go there by train, according to figures from the Compagnie des Alpes, owner of ten ski areas. Of the 158 ski resorts in the French Alps, less than ten are accessible by train, with direct access to Chamonix (Haute-Savoie), Les Arcs (Savoie), Briançon (Hautes-Alpes) and Saint-Gervais (Haute-Savoie). Savoy).
This year there are added complications in the Maurienne valley (Savoie), where the railway line linking France and Italy has been cut since August by a landslide, compensated by substitute shuttles. This complicates access to resorts like Valfréjus and Valloire.
Resumption of traffic in the Channel Tunnel
More fear than harm. Closed at midday due to a surprise strike by Eurotunnel staff, the Channel Tunnel was able to reopen on Thursday evening, with the unions notably highlighting “result-producing” discussions with their management. Eurostar, high-speed trains linking London to Paris and Brussels, should be able to run again on Friday. Enough to relieve some of the French people who will spend Christmas in the United Kingdom and vice versa.
“The movement of social crisis at Eurotunnel is coming to an end,” declared Franck Herent, FO delegate, who read a press release in front of the headquarters in Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais) – at the exit of the tunnel on the French side –, where were brought together employees. “If the company’s employees are returning to their jobs, it is because the negotiations that we fiercely conducted during the day with general management brought results that satisfy us,” he said. following a meeting with management.
Neither party has given details of the agreement. But management had indicated in the afternoon that the union organizations were demanding a tripling of the bonus of 1000 euros which had been promised to them.