The Senate on Wednesday, June 24, requested a “shock of simplification” of public transport ticketing in France, in particular by developing the SNCF Connect platform, to strengthen the rights of users in the face of the proliferation of regional brands and to avoid the emergence of platforms from digital giants.
“The purchase of transport tickets is too complex a process” estimates the Senate in a report adopted Wednesday by the Sustainable Development Commission formulating 17 proposals, including that of developing a national interoperability platform (PNI).
Taking public transport is sometimes akin to an “obstacle course”, with the user now having to download a host of applications (urban, regional, national), combine different tickets themselves if they leave their region and they “run the risk of ending up on the platform in the event of a delay or missed connection”, denounces the report.
In fact, as regional rail lines (TER) were opened up to competition, which are no longer systematically operated by the SNCF, the regions have renamed their rail services: Zou in the South, Fluo in the Grand Est, Lio in Occitanie, Remi in the Pays de Loire, Nomad in Normandy, Transilien in Île-de-France or Mobigo in Burgundy, each time with sales systems for dedicated tickets.
Distributed competition on external platforms
The situation is complicated by the arrival on the French network of players like the Italian Trenitalia or the Spanish Renfe who are distributed on their own platforms and do not have access to that of the historic operator.
“Journeys which go beyond the jurisdiction of an organizing region or which combine urban transport and regional transport or TGV require several acts of purchase on different platforms, to obtain tickets stored on different media and subject to various pricing rules” denounces the Senate, which considers a “shock of simplification” “indispensable”.
The authors of the report also acted upstream by having amendments adopted during the Senate’s examination of the framework law on transport, planning to eventually force the SNCF to open its SNCF Connect reservation system to its competitors.
“We must strengthen the know-how of the public service,” said Senator Franck Dhersin, one of the co-authors of the report during a presentation press conference. “If we do nothing… Tomorrow it will be GAFAM (the American digital giants, Editor’s note) who will take control” of the distribution of transport tickets in France, he warned. “We are offering SNCF Connect a chance to evolve,” he added.
