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Rail sabotage: What to expect if you’re travelling in France this weekend

France's rail network was on Friday hit with an apparently coordinated series of arson attacks with rail bosses saying disruption will continue over the weekend. Here's a look at the latest, plus updates on road and air travel.

Published: 26 July 2024 16:08 CEST
Passengers wait for train departures in Bordeaux, western France
Passengers wait for train departures in Bordeaux, following overnight arson attacks on the network. (Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP)

Friday saw enormous disruption on the railways after a series of arson attacks on France’s key high-speed rail lines – find the latest here.

SNCF said that the travel plans of at least 800,000 passengers have been disrupted on Friday alone, while the transport minister announced that up to 50 percent of services on affected lines would have to be cancelled.

A quarter of Eurostar services between Paris and London were cancelled on Friday.

And the disruption is set to continue over the weekend – the arson attacks involved setting fire to “conduits carrying multiple (fibre-optic) cables” that relay “safety information for drivers” or control the motors for points that change rails.

SNCF’s CEO said: “There’s a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it’s a manual operation” requiring “hundreds of workers”.

SNCF says services are expected to return to normal by Monday on most lines, but disruption will continue over the weekend.

Anyone planning to travel should check the latest on the SNCF information site here, or download the SNCF Connect app.

On Friday two in three trains were being cancelled on certain lines, and cancellations are likely to continue over the weekend. Services could also be rescheduled or delayed.

The disruption is mostly affecting the high-speed TGV routes in and out of Paris. Local lines are not directly affected but may suffer knock-on disruption.

West and south-west France – this is the most severely affected with no trains out of Gare Montparnasse at all on Friday morning.

Services restarted in the afternoon but only with around a third of the normal trains. Cancellations will continue but at least some services will run on this route over the weekend – although passengers who can postpone their journey are advised to do so. Those services that do run are expected to be very busy.

This affects services to the south-west including Bordeaux and Toulouse, and also the west including Brittany and Normandy lines.

East – trains between Paris and Lille and Paris and Arras are severely disrupted, including the Eurostar which uses the Paris-Lille high-speed tracks.

There are fewer cancellations on this line as trains are being diverted onto the slower local lines, although this is extending journey times by around two hours. On Friday a quarter of Eurostar services between London and Paris were cancelled.

South-east – the TGV Sud-Est axis, running between Paris and Lyon and onwards to Switzerland and Italy was not affected by the sabotage as an arson attack in this area was foiled. Services are running largely as normal with some knock-on disruption.

READ ALSO ‘Sabotage’ on French rail network before Olympics: What we know

Paris public transport is not affected by the sabotage although some services in the city centre are closed or diverted due to Olympics security protocols – more details here.

Roads

Sadly, things might not be much better on France’s roads this weekend – and the rail disruption seems certain only to make an already difficult travel weekend even worse. The French ride-share app BlaBlaCar said it had seen an 88 percent increase in bookings on Friday as people scrambled for an alternative to the train.

This weekend is France’s traditional ‘cross-over’ weekend for 2024. The chassé-croisé happens each year during the final weekend in July, is the annual moment when July holidaymakers start to return home while the August holidaymakers head off for their big summer getaways.

France’s traffic watchdog, Bison Futé, predicted that traffic will be heavy on Friday, with extremely difficult traffic conditions on the roads on Saturday, while Sunday will be slightly calmer.

READ ALSO Traffic: What to expect during the 2024 ‘chassé-croisé’ weekend in France 

Airports

The worst of the global IT outage appears to be over, but no one’s even going to attempt to deny that French airports are very busy at this time of year – it’s the world’s most popular tourist destination at the most popular tourist time of the year.

And airports in the Paris region, in particular, are gearing up for an especially busy period, with thousands of Olympic Games fans expected over the next couple of weeks.

From 6.30pm until 12 midnight (CET) on Friday, July 26th, a no-fly zone will be in place within a 150km radius of the French capital for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.

This will mean flights will be interrupted at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle (CDG), Orly airports, and Beauvais airports – this should have little effect on travel plans as airlines have adapted their schedules, having been notified of the no-fly security perimeter in 2023.

Flight resume as normal at 00.01am on Saturday and there are no expected disruptions over the weekend.

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TRAVEL NEWS

France suffers second day of sabotage train delays

Tens of thousands of rail passengers struggled through a second day of cancelled trains Saturday as investigators tracked saboteurs who paralysed the network just ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

Published: 27 July 2024 10:37 CEST
Updated: 27 July 2024 15:12 CEST
France suffers second day of sabotage train delays

The SNCF rail company chief Jean-Pierre Farandou said services would be back to normal by Monday. But deputy transport minister authorities acknowledged that 160,000 of the 800,000 people due to travel this weekend still faced cancellations.

Nearly one third of trains were cancelled in northern, western and eastern France. About a quarter of Eurostar high speed trains between London and Paris also failed to leave.

No claim of responsibility has been made for the meticulously planned night-time attacks on cabling boxes at junctions north, southwest and east of the French capital, just ahead of Friday’s Olympics opening ceremony in Paris. Maintenance workers thwarted a fourth attack.

But Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the investigation was progressing.

“We have uncovered a certain number of elements that allow us to think that we will soon know who is responsible for what clearly did not sabotage the Olympic Games but did sabotage part of the holidays of the French people,” Darmanin told France 2 television.

French authorities are on high alert for a terrorist attack during the Games, which run through August 11. Tens of thousands of police and troops are on Olympics security duties.

Some 250,000 people missed their train on Friday, according to SNCF, because of the attacks that dozens of investigators are now working on.

READ ALSO: Rail sabotage: What to expect if you’re travelling in France this weekend

Three in 10 trains cancelled

About three out of every 10 trains were cancelled Saturday in the three regions affected by the attacks, with most trains still operating delayed by between one and two hours, SNCF said.

Kathleen Cuvellier, speaking in the northern city of Lille, said her journey to Avignon in the south was going to be “hell”.

Cuvellier, travelling with her two-year-old son, said she now had to take a slow train to Paris and then switch to another for Avignon. “The travel time was four hours and now it’s going to be seven”.

“One doesn’t have any choice,” commented Cecile Bonnefond, whose train from Lille to the western city of Nantes was cancelled.

Trains to eastern France have largely returned to normal. But traffic will remain disrupted into Sunday in northern France and into Britain and Belgium, while services to western France would slowly improve, SNCF said.

The company said its staff worked through the night “in difficult conditions in the rain” to get the affected lines working again.

‘Back to normal’

The coordinated attacks staged at 4:00 am early Friday cut fibre optic cables running along the tracks that transmit safety information to train drivers. The attackers also set fire to the cables.

“Everything will be back to normal for Monday morning,” SNCF president Farandou told reporters at Paris Montparnasse station. “We will be ready”.

Most passengers at the station remained patient. But they were given regular loudspeaker reminders that “a malicious act” meant trains would be cancelled or delayed.

Due to the exceptional situation, SNCF station staff have been more flexible than usual, allowing more people on trains than there are seats or refraining from checking tickets.

Anyone planning to travel should check the latest on the SNCF information site here, or download the SNCF Connect app.

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