Renfe plans to begin test trips without passengers on January 16, with a view to reconnecting Barcelona with the French cities of Lyon and Marseille in 2023.
And being able to resume train frequencies was possible because the Spanish operator was able to obtain permission from the European Union’s Railway Agency, ERA, at the request of the French Safety Agency, EPSF.
Renfe aims to offer again before the summer of 2023, the 14 train frequencies between the Catalan capital and Lyon, as well as another 14 between Barcelona and Marseille.
Reconnecting Barcelona with France by train
To achieve this, Renfe will start the first trips in January with empty trains and in tests in mid-January.
However, the return of Spanish trains to the operation of the French road network will have to be done in two phases.
In the first one, convoys will run on alternate days until six weekly trips are made for a total of 12.
In a second phase, both lines will seek to offer a daily trip in each direction to complete the 28 weekly frequencies.
Negotiations between Renfe and SNCF
For its part, Renfe obtained permission to operate the routes between Perpignan and Lyon and between Perpignan and Marseille only, on December 22, 2022.
It should be recalled that Renfe’s solo operations in France were resumed after the break-up on December 10 of the alliance with SNCF through the company Elipsos, which will be definitively dissolved in the coming months.
The Spanish company once again reproached the French company for its “unilateral” decision, but after Ouigo, a subsidiary of SNCF, was consolidated in Spain.
He added that the French operator knew it could operate alone, while Renfe was not yet ready.
This was an exclusively strategic decision that, according to Renfe, cannot be attributed to economic reasons, since in the short and medium term the two companies would have been able to achieve financial equilibrium.
For its part, SNCF responded a few days ago to these comments by arguing that it could not maintain cooperation with Spain because the joint venture had incurred losses of 10 million euros in a decade.
He also pointed out that the only profitable route was the Barcelona-Paris route, which the French operator now offers alone.
Reconnecting Barcelona requires training
In order to resume commercial operations on both lines, Renfe clarified that it must start training train drivers and intervention personnel.
The first to be trained will be skilled workers. The rest will do so progressively in the coming weeks.
At the same time, in January Renfe will start the procedures to open a branch office in France, whose operations center will be in Barcelona.
