The Paris-Lyon line, SNCF's most profitable, continues to whet appetites. After Trenitalia at the end of 2021 and while waiting for Renfe's AVEs still blocked at Lyon Part-Dieu, a newcomer has come out of the woodwork, Claret, following the favourable opinion issued on 1 December by the French Transport Regulation Authority (ART). The decision lends some credence to the project, driven by Claret Associates, a company set up in 2021 by Nicolas Petrovic, former boss of Eurostar until 2018 and then chairman of Siemens France, a German group specialising in the construction of high-speed trains (for Eurostar and Deutsche Bahn in particular). In this venture, he recently teamed up with Olivier Desfontaine, a former Crédit Agricole banker and rail finance specialist.
A project still in limbo
Nicolas Petrovic's application is considered to be sound, and he will be able to obtain train paths from SNCF Réseaux to run his trains. However, he still has many stages to go through, including financing the entire project, ordering the high-speed trainsets (from Alstom, where the order book is already full, or from Siemens, a company he knows well), testing and certification of the trains, staff training, the commercial launch, etc. In this obstacle course, Rachel Picard, former CEO of Voyages SNCF, has a head start having already completed a €1 billion financing round and ordered 12 TGVs from Alstom for her company Velvet, which is due to launch on the Atlantic seaboard by 2028. However, Claret has six years in which to complete its project, following approval from the ART. Stay tuned...
Avoiding traffic jams on the line
But Claret is not the only one with its eye on the Paris-Lyon line. In addition to Renfe in despair to run trains from Gare de Lyon to Spain, Ilisto (a subsidiary of Kevin Speed) is also in the running, although it has not yet secured financing and has no fleet of its own. If these different operators achieve the holy grail, the route could become quite congested. In anticipation of this, SNCF Réseaux will be undertaking major works on the line to reduce the spacing between trains while maintaining maximum safety. The aim is to have 16 TGVs running per hour by 2030, compared with 13 today.
