SNCF launches €10 and €5 fares blitz

RAIL giant SNCF is launching a whole range of low-cost trains with fares from €10 and buses from €5 in a bid to win back customers from cheap car-sharing companies.

The move sees its budget high-speed TGV service, dubbed OuiGo, being extended to eight new stations in the north of the country while its iDBUS service will be renamed OuiBus and see its fleet tripled to “offer four million journeys on 130 services to 46 destinations".

Admitting that people saw its trains as too expensive, SNCF said it was extending the range of its services and setting up three levels of service: classic high-speed TGV trains, its network of Intercités and TER regional trains, plus its low-cost Oui services with OuiGo TGVs and OuiBus inter-city coaches.

This summer it has transported 24 million passengers on 67,000 trains and 20m of those were heading on holiday, including 18m on board TGVs.

With cars being used for 82% of long-distance journeys SNCF wants its 900-seater TGV trains to be seen as a viable form of cheap long-distance public transport and improve on its present 10% market share.

Feeling pressure from car-sharing company BlaBlaCar, which has been a huge success with young travellers who share the cost of a journey, SNCF is extending the OuiGo service beyond its present route from Marne-la-Vallée (just outside Paris) to Lyon and Marseille.

The service, which is now in profit since it launched in 2013, will add eight new stations in the north and west next year, offering six million tickets from €10, to Angers, TGV Haute Picardie, Le Mans, Massy TGV, Nantes, Rennes, Roissy Charles de Gaulle TGV and Tourcoing.

SNCF president Guillaume Pepy said the service had already shown it could attract passengers from other cheap options as research had shown that “more than 50% of travellers would not have taken the train” if the low-cost OuiGo service had not been available.

With new long-distance coach services being launched after the Loi Macron opened the market, SNCF is rebranding its iDBUS service as OuiBus and aimed at serving areas that do not have good train services and which are much used by car-sharing travellers. Mr Pepy said they would not be launching coaches as rivals to its own trains.

He said he would counter the perception that SNCF was too expensive by doubling the number of cheap tickets from 5.4million to 11m in a year and tripling them in three years. The company is also retaining the iDTGV service which is an early-booking, low-cost TGV that offers fares from €19 and €29 first class.

Focus sur OUI, l'offre petit prix #sncf. Itv et cartes sur la Newsroom http://t.co/axVSrzml9I pic.twitter.com/f2pTHD7vxC— SNCF Newsroom (@SNCF_infopresse) September 3, 2015