France: Any journey shorter than 4 hours by train should not be allowed to be taken by plane.
Me, after using French railways for a couple of weeks: They’re running plane services for distances of only 100km?
I’m honestly shocked at how functionally useless French railways are. “Welcome to our interchange. Please wait 2 hours surrounded by screaming kids and chain smokers for your connection. No you can’t have a fucking coffee”
Dear the UK, you have it better than you could possibly believe.
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ So my recent experience is Brittany, which has a couple of mainlines and a bunch of feeder lines. The feeder lines just ... do not link up with the mainline services. In Portugal, which also has this sort of arrangement on a massively shrunk network, the trains on feeders are timetabled to meet connections,. and the connections will be held if necessary. In the UK, connections are typically not held, but are frequent enough that it doesn't matter.
In France, neither of these appear to be true. You are left at a railway station and the next mainline train doesn't even stop there, despite it being an interchange with hundreds of people waiting on the platform. When one finally does stop, it's utterly rammed.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ I can't agree. The UK, even in places as remote as North Wales, actually tries to timetable branch line shuttles to connect to mainline services in less than ninety minutes.
In France, it doesn't even seem to occur to them that this is a thing they can do.
MJ Ray
Unknown parent • • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ These were very clearly not lines short of slots. The branches were literal shuttles where they had pretty much total freedom of scheduling. Train goes from one end to the other. Has dedicated platform at the mainline station. Massive amounts of dwell time. There is literally nothing else on the line.
They weren’t even trying.
Sarah Brown
in reply to MJ Ray • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •@Alexa (She/Her) 🏳️⚧️ Closest equivalent I can think of in the UK that I’m familiar with is the Dengie Peninsula shuttle. Literally the only scheduling issue is that the train coming the other way needs to be in the passing loop to go past.
I’m fully aware of all the issues that you highlight. This wasn’t that. Connections just aren’t a thing, and it seemed systemic too. Get to the terminus of one of these branches and there’s a taxi rank. There are no taxis in it. Ever. There’s a piece of A4 with the numbers of a few minicab companies. The shuttle comes in 4 times a day. The idea that the people getting off it might want a taxi to the next town over, or a bus (because, surprise surprise, the buses do not attempt to link up with train times either), appears to be utterly alien.
Adam
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •MJ Ray
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown
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