2023-05-11 14:30:00
Vueling’s announcement of a connection between Toulouse and Barcelona is causing a stir. But given the local situation, is this so surprising?
This Tuesday, May 9, the airline Vueling announced the establishment of a new line which will connect, from July 1, Toulouse to Barcelona via low cost flights between 22 euros and 78 euros.
A connection operated three times a week with Airbus A319 or A320 from 144 to 180 seats which will take less than an hour to connect the two cities 340 kilometers apart.
An announcement that delighted the inhabitants of Toulouse, fond of holidays or long weekends in Catalonia. But this new line is in the crosshairs of environmental defense groups who denounce “a leap backwards” and an ecological aberration.
There have been no more direct trains between Barcelona and Toulouse since 2019. But there will once more be flights operated by Vueling between the two cities, 325 kilometers apart, this summer. (4 hours drive). The decarbonization of transport is not for now… https://t.co/Nf2oEfs2QG
— Henry de Laguérie (@henrydelaguerie) May 9, 2023
Thus, Charlène Fleury, coordinator of the “Rester sur Terre” network, recalled on BFM TV that “the plane is the most polluting mode of transport and the least necessary, especially on small lines like these”. According to her, “on the contrary, the railway line which was abandoned in 2020 should be restored”.
ud83dudcac “It’s clearly a step back, the plane is the most polluting mode of transport and the least necessary, especially on short lines”
u27a1ufe0f Charlène Fleury, coordinator of the “Rester sur Terre” network, opposes the new Toulouse-Barcelona airline pic.twitter.com/6DGHGBgSyF
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) May 11, 2023
The SNCF at the center of the debate
And therein lies the crux of the problem. Partners when the cross-border line opened in 2013, SNCF and Renfe now compete. While the line between Toulouse and Barcelona had been abandoned during the Covid, the last two rail links between Madrid and Marseille and between Barcelona and Lyon have not been in operation since December 11, 2022, the Spanish company no longer having the authorization to circulate on French territory.
Now substitute only two trains a day between Barcelona and Paris provided by the SNCF. A first aberration, these two trains being the only ones to cross the Pyrenees through the Perthus tunnel which had, in its time, cost the modest sum of 3.5 billion euros…
The disappearance of Renfe-SNCF trains is the result of the obstruction of France, which is doing everything to protect its market and maintain the monopoly of its national company despite the official opening to competition. An incomprehensible attitude with regard to the establishment in Spain of the French OuiGo between Barcelona and Madrid, whose success is undeniable.
The plane, the only alternative?
As a result, to get from Toulouse to Barcelona, it now takes 4 hours by train (with a change at Narbonne) and by car, adding traffic to the already saturated A61, A9 and AP-7 motorways in Spain.
If the local public authorities, in Occitania as in Catalonia, scrap to put trains back on the rails between Toulouse, Montpellier and Barcelona via Perpignan, it gets stuck in terms of funding. The plane therefore represents an alternative which sees the competition roll out the red carpet for it, even if Renfe says it is still ready to launch Madrid-Marseilles and Barcelona-Lyons from this spring.
This Wednesday, in The Midi Dispatch, Rodérick Egal, consultant, specialist in cross-border relations, got carried away. “How do we want citizens to believe the discourse on ecological transition when we give them such a spectacle? Three months following the France-Spain Treaty in Barcelona, we are still not doing anything to get trains through the Perthus tunnel, a infrastructure that has cost billions of public money.”
For years, travellers, business leaders and public authorities in Occitania have been screaming into the void to demand more trains to open up their territories far from everything and too easily neglected by centralized decisions. Will this controversy put their fight forward?
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