Three months or twelve weeks or 84 days – that’s the extensive amount of time French people and their visitors will be left without reliable public transport.
Rail workers kicked off a long-term strike today, which will see stoppages on two out of every five days as part of a mass protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s reform agenda designed to fix debt and dysfunction in the railway system, The Local France reported.
Overall, some 4.5 million train passengers will be affected by the long-term strike, with today aka ‘Black Tuesday’ labelled as the worst for travellers as only one high-speed TGV train out of eight will run and one regional train out of five.
All services towards Spain, Italy and Switzerland have been called off for the day, while only three out of four Eurostar trains to London and Brussels will run. The only services scheduled to run as normal for the time being as those heading towards Belgium and the Netherlands.
Image: SNCF/Facebook
Joining rail workers on the large walk-out are those in the rubbish and energy sectors, while a one-day strike at Air France over pay will see only 75 percent of flights take off over the next 24 hours.
According to union leaders, the President’s plan to make France’s rail system more competitive with European neighbours will “destroy the public railways through pure ideological dogmatism”.
Unions believe the move is a step towards privatising the rail network, which the government denies.
Rail strikes are scheduled to last until 28 June, so Travel Agents, make sure your clients have a plan b or click here to find out if a service has been affected.
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