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Low cost in high-speed train in France. Customer-king and the public service guillotine

5. Conclusion

Commercial strategies of SNCF Mobilités and the answers brought back from the clientele,
forced (or not) to escape from high prices if it wishes to travel, have amounted to those
incontestable truths: a) little by little, low cost according to SNCF is getting more and more
degraded. In its “Eurostar Snap” or “TGV pop” versions, the business model (according to
marketers) rests on the idea that the train will only leave if enough people on the internet
have declared themselves interested. Could we imagine less consideration for the clientele
called “entry level”? b) The implementation of low cost is an experimentation field for
some dispositions that are then extended to all transport products, whether they be rail or
road, by the great public railway firm, something that Kestel and Larue (2016) show very
well by studying OUIBUS in parallel with OUIGO.
The multimodal policy of SNCF aims at instilling the idea that competition is the source of
price reduction in transports, when public investment and most notably a taking up of the
debt by public authority would be a surer and preferable alternative in order to lessen the
price of the kilometer traveled in train. According to a transport lawyer: “generalization
of low cost translates and shows the emergence of a precarious lifestyle, and an existence
that is subdued to the laws of marketing. The buying power gained by this service does not
put the client-user at the heart of the public service, because of buying without power”
(Quessette 2016, p. 23). And finally it is the idea of public service “à la française” (Brouté,
2016) itself that is mined by those commercial initiatives.
In a press conference, the President of SNCF gave his conception of the client. “I am sure
that low cost will be a great success in railways.” “Our clients don’t care at all in what
kind of transport they travel: they want price, price, price, simplicity and that it be fluid.
After that, it’s better if it’s ecological. So we will never have air transport.” 17 This evokes
4
the simplistic vision that engineer Taylor had of worker Schmidt as only moved by money,
indifferent to the organization of work, its working collectives and hierarchical situation.
His only identity was the will to bring back, at whatever cost, more dollars home.
If the deregulation of commercial offer is not appealing for public service, we now have
enough hindsight to see that it is not a good thing for railway workers. This offer wouldn’t
have been possible without a weakening of union resistances and inversely the emergence
of low cost, which as we have shown induces always more degraded performances, is an
accelerator of this trend. Working conditions in the low cost are a model for the parent
company. By paraphrasing M. Carolan (2015), we could say that on the social level, the cost
of low cost is indeed very high!
We thus have sketched an outline that would have to be continued: under a commercial offer
that seems at first sight to be inexpensive, is hidden a sound attack on the idea of equality
supposed by French public service. Until the end of the 1960s, it relied – at least on traveler
transportation – on the principle of fare equalization and the “obligation to transport”. Or,
as explained by Quessette, “now it is the client that has to oblige SNCF in order to travel,
and not the contrary.” For the lawyer specialized in transport, this bifurcation was made
in 1971, when a decree allowed SNCF autonomy in management. From then on, the idea of
“public service” had strongly lost its hold.
As for the client, the logic of immediate advantage in which low cost confines him isn’t
without any risks: “public service liberates when low cost oppresses. Low cost symbolizes
the fall of society and an important part of its population into precariousness.” (Quessette
2016, p. 25)

4 https://investir.lesechos.fr/actions/actualites/france-la-sncf-anticipera-l-ouverture-a-la-concurrence-1561444.
php#pTtOIyhabfSIwA3q.99

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