The French state has temporarily abandoned a plan to introduce competition on the Nantes-Lyon and Nantes-Bordeaux intercity railway lines after an earlier call for tenders went unanswered.
The ministry of ecology launched a tender at the beginning of 2020 but said its conditions to allow fair and equitable competition had not yet been met.
The ministry said it would wait until there was clear visibility on exiting the Covid crisis before relaunching the competitive tendering procedure. In the meantime, the government says it will work with SNCF to increase services on the routes to four round trips per day between Nantes and Bordeaux (instead of three today) and three between Nantes and Lyon (compared to two today) by 2022.
The two lines are part of France’s TET intercity network which are not served by TGV services. The government is looking at whether to develop new TET lines and restructure certain domestic air links.
Meanwhile, SNCF has announced that it recently carried out the first trial as part of a project that would see driverless operation on the French rail network.
It said a train with 100 per cent automated acceleration and braking carried out a journey under the supervision of a driver between Longwy and Longuyon in eastern France at the end of October.
The goal of the project is to have a driverless train operating on the network by 2023.
The rail company said this would increase rail capacity, increase service frequency and allow greener transport thanks to lower energy consumption.