The rail transport company “Le Train” will offer 50 daily connections between 11 cities in the great west from 2025, at competitive rates. Bordeaux would then be 3h30 from Rennes, without correspondence, once morest 4h27 today with the SNCF.
Reach Bordeaux from Rennes in 3h30 without going through Paris? This is an offer that might well interest many Bretons, as well as the inhabitants of the Bordeaux region.
The announcement is all the more attractive as the private company Le Train announces that the prices will be competitive and the range of services complete.
This is the first time in France that a rail operator will launch a high-speed offer competing with SNCF’s TGVs.
The journey between Rennes and Bordeaux will be via Angers, Tours, Poitiers and Angoulême, in order to take advantage of the existing high-speed line between Tours and Bordeaux.
Other trains will connect Bordeaux to Nantes following the same route (Angoulême-Poitiers-Tours-Angers).
Arcachon, Niort and La Rochelle are the other cities the carrier plans to serve from 2025.
In total, therefore, 11 towns will be linked together by the TGVs of the train company.
Trains already ordered from Spanish railway manufacturer Talgo. “The contract with Talgo, following a call tender launched in 2022, includes the order for these ten Avril-type trainsets, with the ability to buy more for ten years. It also provides for maintenance for thirty years and the creation in New Aquitaine of a research and development branch responsible for thinking regarding the trains of the future” explained Alain Getraud, co-founder of the railway company and managing director, during the press conference organized in Bordeaux last January.
The rail carrier Le Train was created in 2020 in Charentes by the entrepreneur Tony Bonifaci, with the ambition of offering intra and inter-regional connections complementary to the SNCF offer.
The company also promises a quality of service (including spaces dedicated to bicycles and surfboards) and above all stable and competitive prices. To date, no figures have been put forward.
After a first stage in the great west, Le Train aims to expand to other regions of France.
150 employees would be hired to ensure the operation of its network. A maintenance center would be operated in New Aquitaine for the maintenance of rolling stock
