The first train operated by the Spanish company Renfe arrives this Friday at Marseille station from Madrid, seven months after the interruption of this link by the SNCF, thus inaugurating a second line after the Barcelona-Lyon launched on July 13. The AVE train, the equivalent of French TGVs, is due to arrive in Marseille-Saint-Charles at 9.30 p.m. after an 8-hour and 5-minute journey from Atocha station in Madrid.
It will serve many stations on its route including in Spain those of Zaragoza, Barcelona or Girona and in France Perpignan, Narbonne, Béziers, Montpellier, Nîmes, Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. To compete with the SNCF on its former historic monopoly, Renfe has drawn offers defying all competition with call prices of 29 euros to connect Madrid to Marseille and even 9 euros for a high-speed journey between French stations.
For the moment, the Spanish company offers one round trip per day from Friday to Monday, but it intends to make this daily trip from October. Renfe is the second company to come and hunt on the historic lands of the SNCF after Trenitalia, which opened a line between Paris and Milan in December 2021 via Lyon.
The Transport Regulatory Authority (ART) studied price variations on the Paris-Lyon section in 2022 to analyze the impact of competition and noted a reduction of more than 10% in fares per passenger. As with its Italian counterpart, Renfe has asked to benefit from discounts on tolls (train paths) to use the network, in order to promote its entry into the French market.
In addition to SNCF, Trenitalia and Renfe, a fourth operator has announced its intention to set off on the rails in France: Arriva, a subsidiary of the German Deutsche Bahn, plans to open a Groningen-Paris line linking the French capital to Brussels and Amsterdam from the summer of 2026. All these companies operate under the “open access” model, that is to say they receive no public aid. They must supply the trains, recruit railway workers, set up a sales system and obtain the famous furrows (traffic slots) to run their trains, which requires having strong backs.
