Strikes, results in the red, disturbed traffic …, bad weather for the SNCF

"The heat wave does not go very well with trains by the hour" had warned Guillaume Pepy , Friday, July 27 in the morning, on RTL, asking in advance "understanding and benevolence". The CEO of the SNCF had in mind how the heat can dilate the rails.

The problem came from elsewhere. Just hours after the intervention of Mr. Pepy, a fire ravaged an EDF substation in Issy-Les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine), near the tracks of Montparnbade station.

Immediate consequences : thick black smoke throughout the neighborhood, more than two thousand people evacuated, electricity cut for sixteen thousand homes … and a completely interrupted traffic to Montparnbade for several hours, lack of power, before resuming the drip. 19659007] A nasty blow for the SNCF, at the beginning of the busiest weekend of the year, with a million pbadengers expected. The management immediately invited its customers to postpone their trip if possible, and transferred some TGV to Austerlitz station. This did not prevent a certain mess on the spot.

Enough to awaken the painful memory of the enormous disturbances caused in the same Montparnbade station exactly a year ago by the breakdown of a Vanves-Malakoff signaling station (Tops -de-Seine). At that time, it took nearly 48 hours to identify the cause of the incident, and pbadenger information was considered erratic. Tens of thousands of travelers had been affected.

Everything was gone

The breakdown of Friday confirms it: for SNCF, win back its customers and rectify its accounts is not easy. Overall, the TGV, the flagship product of the company, began to emerge from the vicious circle in which it was located.

Instead of raising prices, to see customers leave and raise again its rates for limit losses, the SNCF corrected …