A report to the Ministry of Transport urging scrapping of hundreds of inter-city and regional trains is getting a hot reaction from towns and politicians all over. The proposal would also kill a number of overnight trains connecting Paris to the south.
The cuts would not affect France's flagship rail system, the TGV, but would make drastic cuts in the second-tier inter-city and regional services that run 325 trains a day to more than 300 destinations. These services, run by two contractors (Corail and Teoz) are deeply in debt and have not had the investment and attention TGV has gotten.
When you look at the map above of services that would end, remember that you are seeing only the main towns served by these trains; each has many stops where no service would be available. The report believes that new bus services could replace them. Representatives of the towns are concerned that they will lose business and other connections to nearby cities. Caroline Cayeux, president of Villes de France, an association of municipalities, believes it could result in "desertification" of some regions. There's MORE information at Le Parisien, or in English at The Local
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