Moving purposefully

I read an article just now about how South Korea is planning to revive its non-stop Seoul-Busan railway services (these two cities are the country's biggest).  It said that direct services had existed, but were discontinued, though they believe the economics are now different.  This got me thinking about one thing that is great about France's high-speed network: - the extensive use of non-stop or "infrequent-stop" services with great journey times.  Great journey times are fundamental to a good railway system.  The service planning that SNCF is probably the greatest thing about our high-speed network: - French train journey times are fantastic.  A Frenchwoman loves to sit back, unwind and enjoy the moment, but she manages her time efficiently and therefore does not want to uselessly spend an unduly large amount of time on trains because of ridiculous service and timetable planning: - she doesn't like to rush, but she loves to move purposefully.  She doesn't want to be stuck on a train going nowhere, whiling away the time in long dwell times at stations.  This would deduct from the time she has to shop for the latest fashions and the choicest ingredients at markets.

Apart from a Frenchwoman wanting to move purposefully, SNCF is always in a hard-slog battle to compete with air travel, which is never easy.  On some routes, it is in the lead (Paris-Marseille TGV services have an absolute majority), whereas the Paris-Orly Toulouse-Blagnac air route is the most congested in Europe.  I guess this is due to the prosperity of Toulouse, the prevalence of its aerospace industry there and the extremely long journey times (5h27m direct, 5h24m with an interchange).  When the LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique and the Toulouse branch of the GPSO (Grand Projet Ferroviaire du Sud-Ouest) are complete, journey times will be 3h14m with a stop in Bordeaux and 3h07m without, which will hopefully reduce air journeys drastically.

I know this is comparing apples and oranges, but roughly equivalent high-speed journeys in Germany for instance would take a very long time because of very generous timetabling and stopping patterns that prevent various routes from being competitive.  For instance, Hamburg Hauptbahnhof-Munich Hauptbahnhof (admittedly with a few high-speed gaps, e.g between Würzburg and Nuremberg is about 780km, but the fastest direct service is 5h38m (5h36m possible with interchange).  It stops in Hamburg-Harburg, Hannover Hauptbahnhof, Göttingen, Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, Fulda, Würzburg, Nuremberg and Ingolstadt.  I am aware that Germany's settlement pattern is very different (lots of medium-sized cities everywhere), but they have missed several opportunities for reasonable journey times, e.g. by not building bypasses.  Apart from the Coburg bypass on the Erfurt-Nuremberg route to be opened this year, I struggle to think of high-speed bypasses in Germany where the town centre station is also served.  Given that Germans dislike anything outside the ordinary as far as punctuality goes, timetable planning often involves very generous run and station dwell times.  Probably, when they are planning timetables, they probably say, "How long does zis journey take at line speed?  Five minutes?  Give it an hour and ven it arrives on time, we will say, "Ve Germans are so efficient!""  There are plenty of stations that appear to be useless for high-speed traffic, given the low populations they serve, one example being Siegburg/Bonn station.

Austria also doesn't seem all that concerned about journey times: - whenever new railway improvements come along that should improve journey times, they always seem to slip in some more stops or journey time padding.  For instance, I cannot understand the need to stop Railjet trains in Jenbach.  Given that: -
1) Innsbruck, the major population centre, has a population of about 130,000, compared to Jenbach's 7,000
2) The Neue Unterinntalbahn (New Lower Inn Valley Railway) allows Jenbach to be bypassed at 220km/h
3) The Railjet trains, having a locomotive configuration, don't have particularly good acceleration
It therefore seems wasteful to stop trains in Jenbach.  I believe the Austrians were aiming for "1-2-3" journey times from Vienna, i.e. 1 hour to Linz, 2 hours to Salzburg and 3 hours to Munich and Innsbruck.  It is anybody's guess how this will be achieved if they are still pursuing it.  However, they will face some competition from Westbahn, which is planning to operate fast services to Salzburg (2h10m, compared to 2h22m with Railjet services), with alternate services going onward to Innsbruck (not sure of the journey times).

On the other hand, the French network has bypasses aplenty and is designed around great journey times.  Cities with high-speed bypasses where town centre through stations are served from both ends that I can think of include Douai, Arras and Lyon.  The LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique to Bordeaux will also include them at Tours (half in service, used by non-stop Bordeaux trains), Poitier and Angoulême, debatably Châtellerault as well.  Currently, there are no non-stop trains running to Marseille (seasonal, I guess), but where they exist, they have tended to offer journey times of 3h05m for the 742km journey.  Similarly, though the Paris-Bordeaux services only run on high-speed line to just beyond Tours, they offer non-stop journeys of 3h11m, which will drop to around 2h when the LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique enters service this year.  I don't quite understand the lack of a planned bypass at Bordeaux, given the need for Paris-Toulouse journey times to be competitive and a bypass for Eurostar trains not stopping at Lille Europe would be good, as the line goes round three sides of a square, but RFF has generally been enthusiastic about building bypasses.  I am loathed to speak favourably of anything British, but the Ashford bypass is a fantastic feat of engineering: - the line goes underground as it approaches the outskirts of Ashford, stays underground a little way, comes up alongside Ashford International station and runs on a flyover through Ashford, allowing trains to pass through at 300km/h.  This means I can minimise the time I spend in the unsophisticated UK, MDR!

I particularly appreciate good journey times when it is necessary to receive foreign clients at the Paris office, as well as during fashion show season (I hope Marseille becomes a fashion capital one day).  Many foreign visitors come to Paris thinking they will find a quintessentially French city with the Eiffel Tower, people eating frog legs and snails, people wearing striped jerseys and berets etc.  The Eiffel Tower is there and isn't going anywhere, but with all the immigrants and the foreign cultures they inflict upon us, Paris is definitely not a French city!  Other nearby cities, though they have immigrants, don't have them in quite such large numbers.  When they ask to see a more French city, there are several easily available options, e.g. Strasbourg (1h46m), Bordeaux (discussed above) etc.

One day, I hope people will realise the value of great journey times and their contribution to making France great.

LGVs due to be opened this coming year

Looking forward to 2017, I thought I would do a blog post covering the LGVs (Lignes à Grande Vitesse) that are due to open during 2017.  As many readers will be aware, France has an absolutely fantastic LGV network.  It contains one of only two lines to recoup its own building costs (Paris-Lyon, the other being Tokyo-Osaka).

They have made several journeys much easier.  For instance, I just adore visiting Reims (silly English people think it is pronounced "raymz", whereas "ranz" would be a better approximation), where French kings tended to be crowned.  Thanks to the LGV Est, it can be reached via an interchange at Marne la Vallée-Chessy or Aeroport Paris-Charles de Gaulle TGV stations and Gare de Champagne-Ardenne TGV station (served by both TER trains and a local tram network).

Our pinko-liberal commie socialist president (who has thankfully announced he isn't standing next year) delayed the construction of several lines, but several of the lines already in construction before he entered office are due to enter service in 2017, in addition to the 2nd phase of the LGV Est that opened earlier this year.  The lines are the LGV Bretagne-Pays de la Loire, the LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique and the Contournement Nîmes Montpellier, which I will briefly discuss in turn.

The LGV Bretagne-Pays de la Loire will go from the LGV Atlantique's current terminus near Le Mans to Rennes, expediting train journeys to various stations in Brittany.  Mireille Guiliano says her husband Edward notes the similarities there with England (not exactly to its credit, but anyway).  Just like Mireille, I love the seafood available in Brittany.  Yes, various fish products can be caught near Marseille, but Brittany has a very long coastline and different fish.  As per custom for new passenger-only lines, the line will open with an initial top speed of 320km/h, electrification of 25kV 50Hz and TVM300 (Transmission-Voie-Machine) and ERTMS Level 2 signalling.  The line will have several links to the conventional lines.  Some examples of journey time reductions are: -

• Paris-Rennes 1h26m (from 2h05m)
• Paris-Nantes 1h52m (from 2h09m)
• Paris-St Malo 2h14m (from 2h54m)
• Paris-Lorient 2h56m (from 3h43m)
• Paris-Brest 3h25m (from 4h18m)

The LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique will go from the line's current terminus near Tours, where through trains are already able to bypass the city.  From there, it will continue to Ambarès-et-Lagrave (twinned with Norton Radstock, possibly the most gormless and rubbish town in the whole of the UK), which is on the outskirts of Bordeaux, the main urban centre in a region known for its fine wines: - I therefore just adore visiting the city, though this line will not do much to expedite journeys there from Marseille (the Bordeaux-Toulouse section of the GPSO will).  The line will have no new stations, but will have links to the existing intermediate stations on the conventional networks in Châtellerault, Poitiers and Angoulême.  The bypass will allow trains not stopping in these places to proceed full speed ahead to Bordeaux.  The line will be useful for people travelling not just to Bordeaux, but it will also appreciably shorten train journeys to Toulouse and Irún (over the border in Spain, plus the intermediate cities).  This will be particularly useful regarding Toulouse, as the air route between Paris-Orly and Toulouse-Blagnac airports is the busiest in Europe.  Paris-Bordeaux journey times will drop from 3h11m (non-stop) to about two hours.  The line will have an initial maximum speed of 320km/h, with the same power and signalling arrangements as the above lines.

The Contournement Nîmes-Montpellier will bypass Nîmes and allow freight traffic to avoid the centre of Montpellier.  It was decided that the existing Montpellier-St. Roch station would not be able to cope with the increased rail traffic, so the decision was made to build Montpellier-Sud de France station (which will unfortunately not have a tram link until 2020).  The line will bypass the centre of Montpellier, but bring Paris-Montpellier journeys down to about three hours.  It will have an initial operating speed of 220km/h, pending a signalling upgrade, which will allow it to be raised to 300km/h.  The reason for the slightly lower speed is the fact that this line is being designed to accommodate freight traffic, which results in a trade-off between gradients, cants and curvatures (curvature sacrificed for the other two parameters).  It will result in journey time reductions of around 20 minutes for journeys between Paris and Montpellier/Barcelona (and other intermediate destinations), though other train routes, such as the Intercité Bordeaux-Marseille may also use the line.  Bilal enjoys travelling by train to Seville to visit his homies and is learning Spanish (he is apparently doing a good job at mimicking hip-hop Spanish).  When the Nîmes-Perpignan gap is closed, it will be high-speed all the way from Marseille to Seville: - the route for the Montpellier-Perpignan section has been decided.  The power supply will be the same, but the initial signalling will be BAL (Bloc Automatique Lumineux) classique and ERTMS, both Level 1.

2017 looks like it will be a good year for high-speed train travel in France.  Spain's high-speed projects have more or less ground to a halt: - I wonder if we might have caught up with them by the end of 2017 in terms of kilometres of high-speed routes?

The Bordeaux-Toulouse/French border line

Another article about high-speed rail.  Yes, I know, there are things with more gravity that have happened to me recently (marriage and motherhood), which I will address in time.  However, writing is not always about priorities, but where the creative inspiration lies at the time.  There are plenty of stories to tell about the wedding, the honeymoon, pregnancy, childbirth etc, but they will be covered in due course.

Some readers may be aware that the project to build a y-shaped high-speed railway system between Bordeaux, Toulouse and the French border, or GPSO (Grand Projet Ferroviaire du Sud-Ouest) for short, is advancing, albeit slowly.  François Hollande's government has unfortunately pushed the construction of new lines back significantly.  Nicolas Sarkozy's government, in spite of being relatively right wing (it seems to be unusual for right-wing governments to favour high-speed rail), advanced several projects very substantially.  Nicolas Sarkozy did various things to try and get the economy back on track, which have unfortunately died a death, though to François Hollande's credit, he is belatedly pursuing labour market reforms that Nicolas Sarkozy would no doubt have favoured, resulting in strikes everywhere.

I would personally welcome the flexibility.  I don't plan to work more than 35 hours a week on a regular basis, but if it is a week with lots of fashion shows taking place, then obviously, my magazine's working requirements will be different in comparison to quiet times.  It is no good if a fashion show requires 40 hours of labour in a week and I have to send two people to cover it because one person has maxed out at 35 hours.  Obviously, when one person returns to the office, there is a large amount of work to catch up on, but it is an annoyance that I have to put two workers in a situation where they are rushing to catch up on their return.  I would rather than send one person to a fashion show to work 40 hours and allowing a day-off-in-lieu (a lovely French expression that many English speakers mispronounce) when he or she has caught up.  Apart from anything else, having to send two people to do one person's work is not an efficient use of my working resources.

Anyway, I'll stop this diatribe now, as I risk destroying Zoë Williams' image of French women never ranting, but lighting up another Gauloise and saying "bof" (I have never smoked, by the way).  MDR!  Back to the GPSO!  So what does the GPSO mean for me personally in Marseille?  It means that there are several cities in south-western France that I will be able to reach much more easily.

The benefits for reaching Bordeaux more quickly will be realised with the first phase in 2024.  I love Bordeaux, given its position in the French wine industry.  A Frenchwoman always loves a glass or two of wine: - there is the question of whether Islam (a religion prohibiting alcohol) compromises one's French credentials (reformed Christianity doesn't, particularly given the labours of John Calvin in places like Strasbourg), but that is another story.  Bordeaux itself is a lovely town that is very easy to get around given its tram system.  There are various sights, including the Place de la Bourse (Stock Exchange Square), the river Garonne, Saint André Cathedral (though I admit its beauty is more architectural than spiritual), the Porte Cailhau, the Column of the Girondins etc.  Europe's largest sand dune is not too far from Bordeaux.

The benefits for reaching cities in the far south-west and northeastern Spain will be realised with the opening of the line in two phases in 2027 and 2032.  The main city I like in that part of the country is Biarritz, a ritzy-glitzy seaside resort (okay, well admittedly not as glamorous as Monaco, which is closer to me).  The city is known for its casinos (I'm not into gambling, but the glamour of these places is still nice) and surfing culture.  There is also the Hôtel du Palais, which  has extensive links with various thrones past and present.  The square in front of Sainte Eugénie church is also pretty.

Toulouse is another city I love to visit, though journey times from Marseille will not improve with the GPSO.  However, it is worth a mention.  I have read that the route between Paris-Orly and Toulouse-Blagnac airports is the busiest in the whole of Europe.  A search on http://www.bahn.de showed the fastest Paris-Toulouse journey to be 5h31m: - not competitive with air travel.  However, LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique (Tours-Bordeaux, due to open next year) will reduce the journey time.  When the Bordeaux-Toulouse comes into service, the journey time is expected to go down to 3h10m (which could admittedly be lower still with a proper bypass of Bordeaux, which does not yet appear to exist in the plans, bof).  Bilal says 3 hours is a target the railway industry often uses in terms of deciding which links to pursue to make journeys competitive with air travel.  In any case though, France has been generally a lot more enthusiastic about building bypasses when inner-city stations are served.  Germany virtually never builds them (the one exception I can think of being Cobourg on the not-yet-opened Erfurt-Nuremberg line), the result being that it takes ages to get anywhere by train in Germany.  Admittedly, it is harder in Germany, since it has lots of cities throughout the country that are in the way when you build a new line.  However, Spain has a similar settlement pattern to France, yet there are no full-speed bypasses where inner-city stations are served, with the exception of those on the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line.  Therefore, Spain's journey times, though good, could be better.

Shame the benefits of this will not be realised until our recently-born baby is on the verge of adulthood, bof.  Maybe someone like Nicolas Sarkozy will come to power and reinvigorate high-speed line construction and the economy.  We can only hope.

Cassoulet: - a very naughty French dish (supposedly)

One thing I have noticed is that Anglo-Saxon women like to talk about "naughty" foods, i.e. ones that contain fat.  This shows a very poor understanding of how to eat properly.  A Frenchwoman does not go around thinking about forbidden foods and which foods are "naughty" to eat.  Silly Anglo-Saxon woman talk about "naughty, but nice", as shown in the advertisement below (whose saying was popularised by Salman Rushdie) for cream cakes that featured a now-mostly-retired washed-up soap and Carry On actress (Barbara Windsor, who played Peggy Mitchell in the silly trashy British soap opera EastEnders, where vem characters off of it don't neva talk wiv no proper grammar).

As Mireille Guiliano pointed out, a Frenchwoman doesn't watch much television, so I can't really comment too authoritatively, but anyway, I digress.  A Frenchwoman doesn't do this "naughty, but nice" group.  It is mostly true to say that a Frenchwoman does not abstain from any food types, not even fatty ones.  As a reformed baptist, I am aware of at least 10 parts of the New Testament which say that all foods are fine (Matthew 15:11, Acts 10:9-16, Acts 11:1-10, Romans 14, 1Corinthians 8, 1Timothy 4:1-5, Titus 1:15, Mark 7:14-23, 1Corinthians 10:23-33 and Luke 10:8 for the readers who are interested to look them up).  The only exception to this rule is when the foods are excessively sweet.  As I often say in this blog, as far as an impossibly dainty and sophisticated Frenchwoman is concerned, a dessert should only be as sweet as it needs to be to cleanse one's palate of the previous dish.  Any sweeter than that and it becomes increasingly less sophisticated.

Onto the main point of this article, ignoring the disgusting-looking cupcakes above.  A few days ago, I was contacted by a reader in Barcelona who said that though tapas were available, it wasn't always possible to find the rich foods that would enable her to eat like a dainty Frenchwoman.  I could have told her that cassoulet is vaguely similar to the Spanish Fabada Asturiana, but I don't want her to think anything is even remotely comparable with French cuisine, so I suggested that she visit France more often, MDR.  She said that France wasn't all that accessible, given the low quantity of direct daytime trains, mentioning that the night service to Paris was due for imminent abolition.  I replied by pointing out that earlier this month, RENFE and SNCF started offering more cross-border services this month (previously, the French TGVs only went as far as Figueres) and that two of the new destinations served are Carcassonne and Toulouse.  These two settlements plus Castelnaudary are rather blasphemously referred to as the Holy Trinity of cassoulet, a very well-known dish that helps make we French people as stylish as we are.  Carcassonne is accessible in 2h22m from Barcelona using the new service and Toulouse in 3h07m, which uses the RENFE S-100 rolling stock (notably built by Alstom, a French manufacturer, tee hee), which can be seen below in Seville's Santa Justa station.

All in all, it is very easy for residents of Barcelona to travel to two of the three locations where cassoulet is native to.  Cassoulet is a very, very rich French dish.  On account of its very rich flavour, a dainty Frenchwoman feels no great need to eat large quantities of it.  It is almost the case that a Frenchwoman can take a few dainty nibbles and feel full, savouring each nibble to the fullest, as I have described doing with chocolate in earlier postings.  I have been in Carcassonne and seen stupid Americans ordering four cassoulets per person (because they look around and see how small the dishes are and assume this won't fill them up) and then finding themselves unable to get beyond the second helping.  Still, at least most of them had the good sense to appreciate the beauty of Carcassonne.  As today's weather forecast was relatively good, I suggested a visit to Carcassonne with Bilal.  As the regular readers of my blog will know, Bilal is a solitary character and has therefore not always found much occasion to travel to other areas of France, so he appreciated the change of scenery.

The main ingredients of cassoulet are meat (e.g. pork, goose meat, duck meat etc), pork skin and white beans.  This is one pleasure that a Frenchwoman can therefore enjoy whilst being relatively free of Muslims and Jews: - being a reformed baptist who believes in the principle of sola scriptura, I refer to the above parts of the Bible when someone asks me how I can gain so much pleasure from cassoulet, knowing that supposedly forbidden foods feature so heavily in it (ditto Saucisson d'Arles).  For a few years after his conversion to Christianity, Bilal continued abstaining from pork and restricting himself to halal food, so as to avoid compromising his witness with his family.  After a few years though, he eventually stopped bothering to abstain, as he realised that it is a minor issue in the enormous gulf that separates him from his Muslim family members, though he avoids doing so in front of his family still.

Bilal tried cassoulet for the first time during our visit to Carcassonne today and he also gained an enormous amount of pleasure from the incredibly rich flavour, though this is not something Bilal plans to eat regularly.  The reason for this is that Bilal is an extremely heavily built guy and needs a lot of protein to fulfil his needs, meaning that rich foods of which he feels only able to eat dainty quantities are not ultimately in his best interests.  As ever, Bilal wore his tagelmust/chèche to Carcassonne and this provoked a few stares (I also got a few stares from foreign men not used to seeing dainty Frenchwomen like me, MDR).  However, this was a wise decision, as it was fairly windy and I felt a little cold, while Bilal was wrapped up comfortably warm.  Below is a picture of a Touareg man who appears engaged in thought.  This is not Bilal, but he can often be seen with such facial expressions.

Bilal and I enjoyed our trip to Carcassonne today and I am looking forward to several such days out with him on Saturdays in future: - when one is able to engage Bilal in communication, he is a very personable man with a lot of insightful things to say.  One weekday evening, I would like to show him how to cook cassoulet, tartiflette and all the other wonderful dishes that make we Frenchwomen impossibly perfect and thin: - he was not previously used to it, but he enjoys the culinary variety.

Quasi-indefinite delays with high-speed lines

Lately, I was disturbed to hear about how our useless president François Hollande has messed up the economy and therefore made the decision to delay more or less indefinitely (construction not starting until beyond 2030, apparently) the construction of various high-speed lines.

The main ones affected are the new line to Lyon via Orléans and the two gaps leading to the Spanish border.  When the Nîmes-Montpellier bypass and the Tours-Bordeaux lines have been completed, there will still be gaps between Bordeaux and the Atlantic Spanish border (Hendaye and Irún) and Montpellier and Perpignan (there is already an international mixed high-speed/freight line that starts just after Perpignan).

I liked Nicolas Sarkozy, as he was committed to encouraging enterprise, reducing burdensome regulations on employers and reducing taxes for successful people like me (ooooh, how American I sound, lol).  He also celebrated success and isn't trying to puncture people's dreams.  As icing on the cake, he set in motion plans for a massive increase in the rate at which high-speed railway lines are built in France: - I particularly remember that under him, the design studies for the Montpellier-Perpignan connection were accelerated.

To be fair on François Hollande, the Bordeaux-Toulouse high-speed connection has been retained, but this is of little use to me personally unless I happen to be travelling there from Paris, rather than Marseille.

As for me personally, it seems a shame for SNCF to sign contracts for rolling stock that is easily able to run at 320km/h in service and for our president to then mess up the economy and delay the construction of high-speed lines as a result.

I enjoy visiting Barcelona, as it is a stylish city and a lot of the fashion stuff in Spain seems to happen there.  Spain is reasonable (though not effortlessly perfect) generally.  The CIA estimates its obesity rate to be 26.6%, which I am surprised about: - although Spanish señoritas are not as effortlessly thin as we French women, they are certainly much less obese than American and British women.

From rumours I have read, RENFE (the Spanish operator) is planning to offer Marseille-Barcelona-Madrid services sometime soon, though there have apparently been homologation issues.  I must point out that the Spanish are planning to run their international services using rolling stock supplied by Alstom (a French company, yay!), the S100, which they originally ordered for the first high-speed line they opened (this was the Madrid-Seville line in 1992).

Even when these planned services are introduced, apart from the Nîmes-Montpellier bypass currently under construction, there will still be a huge gap in the high-speed network between Montpellier and Perpignan.  I love being able to zip to lovely cities and see the countryside along the way, but I like my train journeys to be short and sharp, as time I spend on the train is time I could otherwise be spending in the market hunting for the choicest ingredients, visiting swish new restaurants for new recipe ideas or soaking up the fashion scene of whatever city I am in at the time.  As self-important upstart Americans would say, time is money!  Being an efficient French woman, a lot of my time on the trains is spent performing editorial duties on my fashion magazine: - drafts are sent to me by PDF or OpenOffice format (why should I pay to use Microsoft Office if I can get OpenOffice for free?) and I tend to plan things so that I can do editing work during the train journey.  Even so, I am disappointed in our pinko-liberal commie-socialist 75%-tax president!

I am also disappointed because I visit Perpignan regularly and love the Mediterranean atmosphere of the city and I will have to wait a lot longer to enjoy super-fast journeys all the way.

Before closing this blog entry, I thought I would be unpatriotic and mention a few things to do with railways that are done better in Spain, MDR.  Spain has the longest high-speed railway network in the whole of Europe at present and would have briefly had the longest high-speed network in the world if it weren't for delays in opening the line from Madrid to Albacete and Valencia.  I also love the way Club class on Spanish AVE services involves relatively elaborate meals compared to first class on France's TGV services: - I recall a meal with lots of dinky little breakfast items and a dinky little bottle of high-quality olive oil (though not as high as the Provence stuff).

All in all, Spain is nowhere near as impossibly perfect as France, but I am nevertheless disappointed by these delays, which I believe are the inevitable economic reality of our idiotic president's mismanagement of the economy.