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France faces Christmas traffic jams as train strikes force travellers onto roads

This weekend marks the beginning of the Christmas holiday getaway, but with a very limited train service many thousands of people are expected to take to the roads.

Published: 20 December 2019 15:57 CET
France faces Christmas traffic jams as train strikes force travellers onto roads
Expect heavy traffic on Saturday in France. Photo: AFP

A total of 1.7 million people had booked train tickets over Saturday, December 21st and Sunday 22nd, one of the busiest weekends of the year as people across France prepared to go and visit family and friends for the holidays.

But with no end in the sight to the mass transportation strikes gripping the country – and the idea of a 'Christmas truce' ruled out by unions – rail operator SNCF is faced with informing half of those people that they cannot travel.

The company is running just 50 percent of its normal TGV services, although the budget Ouigo services will largely be running as normal.

So many thousands of people will be faced with a choice of either cancelling their trip or going by car.

The weekend had been predicted to be a busy one on the roads even before the strikes started, with French traffic organisation Bison futé warning motorists to expect heavy traffic.

Bison futé has published a traffic warning for heavy traffic on Friday night in the greater Paris area only.

Saturday is predicted to be the big day on the roads, with the whole country coloured orange meaning that driving conditions will be 'difficult'.

Traffic is predicted to be heaviest in the morning as people set off to visit family and friends over the holiday period.

READ ALSO Will any French trains be running over the Christmas holidays?

Map: Bison futé

 

Anyone who doesn't own their own car might be considering hiring one, be if so it would be wise to do it quickly as many car hire firms are unsurprisingly reporting high demand.

Europcar told French TV channel BFM that they were seeing 30 higher demand than normal and about 85 percent of their fleet was already booked out by Wednesday.

“We've seen twice as many requests in some regions,” mainly Paris and southwest France, said Robert Ostermann, France director for Europcar.

Taxi companies in Paris had already stopped taking Friday reservations early this week as many Metro lines remain shut, while Twitter is awash with irate Uber users forced to pay two to three times normal rates.

The budget bus service FlixBus is also reporting high demand along with ride sharing apps like BlaBlaCar.

In an attempt to provide some extra transport services, the French government on Thursday published a decree temporarily allowing bus drivers to driver longer than their normal hours.

The measures do not apply to school buses or city public transport, but will apply to long-distance coach services.

Flixbus and BlaBlaCar's bus operator BlaBlaBus have reported that demand for tickets has doubled on their services since the strikes began on December 5th.

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

Published: 26 March 2024 09:55 CET
German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of €420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of €2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some €200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of €2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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