SNCF to link up with with bus and car share

[whole diary]

[stuving]

I could have called this thread "mix Ouibus with BlaBlaCar and you get ...", but that's only today's news. SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) is selling its Ouibus operation to BlaBlaCar, and buying into the business (just a small minority stake). Ouibus is France's second-biggest long-distance coach line, after Flixbus, and its 30% share is big enough to lose SNCF lots of money. Obviously they don't think it will ever stop losing money under their ownership, so they have had a rethink of the issue.

These bus routes were restricted to not compete with trains, until new rules were introduced by a young industry minister called Macron (whatever happened to him?). SNCF felt threatened and felt they had to try to keep the business their trains lost, but it's a low-margin business that has already killed off Megabus France, and now SNCF too.

During the rail strikes SNCF started to collaborate with BlaBlaCar as a way of offering substitutes to get people to work, and that has led to ideas of further cooperation. SNCF are now talking about through bookings for train + bus + car share - and "BlaBlacar are not the enemy any more, our common enemy is the private car". That looks to have more relevance here than the sale, hence the title.