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France 'yellow vest' motoring protest

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squizzler

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Like a Critical Mass protest they used to have in London. It even borrows the symbolism of yellow tops (that used by stage leaders in Tour de France). However it's not about bicycle riders, it's the keen motorists out en mass.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46233560

Drivers have begun disrupting traffic across France by blocking roads, bridges and toll booths in a mass protest at rising fuel prices.

Dubbed the "yellow vests" after the high-visibility jackets they use as their symbol, they are expected to muster in at least 700 locations.

Any impact on rail travel (other than perhaps a general increase in demand and last minute bookings)?
 
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CC 72100

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Like a Critical Mass protest they used to have in London. It even borrows the symbolism of yellow tops (that used by stage leaders in Tour de France). However it's not about bicycle riders, it's the keen motorists out en mass.

I'd have said it's more so a reference to the yellow vests that you must have in your car in France as part of the equipment that you carry with your vehicle than the TdF.
 

yorkie

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I'd like to see a counter protest about the amount of pollution these vehicles and their users cause.
 

Groningen

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I believe Macron wants to go green. Less car use; more public transportation use.
 

Groningen

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Yes; remember the fuel protest. Also trains were affected, because they mainly run on diesel now and than.
 

Starmill

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I believe Macron wants to go green. Less car use; more public transportation use.
I would not call his proposed hydrocarbon levy levels 'going green' - or anything close to it.

To me, the levy seems very modest. The typical retail price of diesel in France seems pretty much on a par with other similar countries, even after the proposed increases in tax?
 

squizzler

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I would not call his proposed hydrocarbon levy levels 'going green' - or anything close to it.

To me, the levy seems very modest. The typical retail price of diesel in France seems pretty much on a par with other similar countries, even after the proposed increases in tax?

I think he has to stick the course with the fuel tax. I don't follow the debate but strongly suspect that (like in the UK) the fairer instrument of wider adoption of road user pricing has been ruled out by the motoring community hence fuel tax being used as disincentive. If so, they just gotta suck it up.

Macron has to stick with his guns if he wants a fair transport policy. The railways have already done their bit after the strikes of the summer.

The number of injuries resulting from this protest is telling. The casualties amongst protestors are mainly not from the CRS (riot police) so much as from being struck by their fellow car users forcing their vehicles through the pickets. That suggests not all the motoring community is onboard, which also leads me to suspect the level of wider public support might be overstated.
 

CC 72100

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This is the beauty of French politics. The French vote for change, then don't like it when the person who they voted for brings in change :lol:

On a serious note, there is an increasing anti-car sentiment in Paris - Anne Hidalgo for example as mayor of Paris is ramping up policies to reduce cars within Paris intra-muros.
 

edwin_m

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This is the beauty of French politics. The French vote for change, then don't like it when the person who they voted for brings in change :lol:

On a serious note, there is an increasing anti-car sentiment in Paris - Anne Hidalgo for example as mayor of Paris is ramping up policies to reduce cars within Paris intra-muros.
And has also persuaded the suburbs to accept a ban on older vehicles over a much wider area.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/11/ile-de-france-metropole-paris-diesel-car-ban/575710/

On Monday, a large group of suburban municipalities agreed to ban all diesel-fueled cars built before 2000 inside the A86 Beltway, starting in July. In 2025, this will be upgraded to a ban on all diesel vehicles from before 2010, plus a ban on more polluting gasoline-powered cars built before 2006.
 

squizzler

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I understand that the fuel taxes are deferred for six months to consider other options. This is a rail forum, so my question is thus: What happen with the recent restructuring of SNCF including debt write off and market liberalisation? Presumably restructuring sets the railways up for growth driven by modal share. Will the railways still benefit from the reforms with less modal shift than expected?

Myself, I think the only fair option is for congestion charge. That is a much more precise instrument, allowing the charging of motorists who roll into towns where they could use public transport without penalising those whose journeys both start and end in backwater places.
 

Ken H

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from what I have read the protests have morphed into a general protest against the french government. there does not seem to be any organised leadership so disparate groups are protesting different things.
I have heard people are now against the UN Migration pact due to be signed 10th December
but a general dislike of Macron

And its spread to Belgium....
 

Shaw S Hunter

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from what I have read the protests have morphed into a general protest against the french government. there does not seem to be any organised leadership so disparate groups are protesting different things.
I have heard people are now against the UN Migration pact due to be signed 10th December
but a general dislike of Macron

And its spread to Belgium....

In all honesty it wouldn't be autumn without some sort of strike or protest in France. Once the winter holiday/skiing season kicks in I doubt people will be quite so keen to disrupt their leisure time. C'est la vie...
 

MarkyT

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Part of the problem is much of rural France has very poor or non existent public transport, and much of France IS very rural with a low thinly distributed population, so it's often difficult to provide effective transport anyway, by any mode other than private cars. Couple that with extremely auto-centric development in all but the biggest cities for decades and it's easy to see the political problems of attempting to nudge and cajole polluting behaviour in the Republic of Michelin.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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I understand that the fuel taxes are deferred for six months to consider other options. This is a rail forum, so my question is thus: What happen with the recent restructuring of SNCF including debt write off and market liberalisation? Presumably restructuring sets the railways up for growth driven by modal share. Will the railways still benefit from the reforms with less modal shift than expected?

Myself, I think the only fair option is for congestion charge. That is a much more precise instrument, allowing the charging of motorists who roll into towns where they could use public transport without penalising those whose journeys both start and end in backwater places.

The rail reforms are going ahead, if watered down a little.
SNCF is to lose €35 billion of its debt (80%) to central government.
It will become a plc-equivalent and lose its guaranteed monopoly on regional and long distance services (competition model not decided yet).
Regional closures have been devolved to the regions to decide or fund.
Meanwhile lots of trains (main line and TER) have been ordered using the existing SNCF frame agreements with French manufacturers.
 

MarkyT

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...competition model not decided yet
Probably like Germany, just allowing fair competitive open access for long distance profitable services, something which AFAIK France has yet to experience at all, unlike in most other EU countries to varying degrees of success. I don't know why open access hasn't happened even tentatively in France, whether it's been officially opposed by the state (in contravention of EU directives) or whether SNCF have used unfair tactics to prevent it. Again like Germany, in regional publicly subsidised operation I'd expect a concession model with rail integrated into broader local transport networks and fares structures.
Regional closures have been devolved to the regions to decide or fund.
For me, that's the right level to make those decisions, assuming the regional authorities can fund whatever they wish to do.
 
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Gostav

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I think the leaders shouldn't ignore the fact that today diesel lorries are still the mainstream of road freight.
 

squizzler

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from what I have read the protests have morphed into a general protest against the french government. there does not seem to be any organised leadership so disparate groups are protesting different things.
I have heard people are now against the UN Migration pact due to be signed 10th December
but a general dislike of Macron

And its spread to Belgium....

Your post raises many questions left unsaid. We know that there are widespread frustrations at declining standards of living. But who or what is agitating people into street violence?


The "yellow vest" moment is supposed to be spontaneous and organised via social media. We all know in retrospect that what were at the time portrayed as so-called popular uprising - Trump's election, Brexit, etc - were engineered for desired outcomes over social media by the Russians and outfits such as Cambridge analytica. Why are the yellow vest protests likely to be any different?

The current bout of rioting in France raises the questions the news does not really seem to have drilled into – namely who or what is really behind all this agitation?

The media narrative spontaneous “people power” – all the more pure because it has no leaders – seems very lazy. Such protesting is also portrayed as a quintessentially part of french culture. The causes of the protests, where they are mentioned at all, is little more than a bingo sheet of the popular disaffection with “metropolitan elites” narrative we have endured over Brexit vote and Trump’s election. In retrospect we now know various actors have attempted to influence people over social media.


In France the protests are apparently organised over facebook, itself a reason to doubt its legitimacy. We can establish a few facts about the yellow vests and facebook:

  1. We know that the quality of life in the West is declining due to environmental and social pressures and those who the British press call JAM’s (Just about managing) are unhappy at their circumstances. France is no different to other countries in that regard. It does not follow that people will natural support street violence – the 2011 riots in the UK, for example, were roundly condemned.
  2. There is no reason to believe President Macron is more divisive, or less popular, than other national leaders. The UK for instance has a very fractious government and socially divided population thanks to leaving the EU, the legitimacy of the latter also damaged by a shadowy campaign managed through social media.
  3. It is now established facebook is a shoddy organisation, and their website employs dubious programming in which generating social friction is the means to the end of creating increased user interaction via the website.
  4. It is also demonstrable fact that facebook has been cracked wide open by the Russians and others who use it as a kind of information warfare tool to subvert democracy. Brexit and the election of Trump both bear the fingerprints of Russian interference.
  5. The “Colour revolutions” that took place in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and other places burned the Russian attempts to maintain ties with the former soviet republics. Arguably these revolutions, which Russia blames on Western NGO interference, was the genesis of the current Russian propaganda efforts against the West. It would hardly be surprising if they tried the same tactics against the West when the opportunity arose.
To summarise, we already know that popular disaffection does exist, and have seen how it can be harnessed by external actors to achieve the social disruption that enemies of Western democracy so crave. Why would the Yellow Vest protests be any different?

https://heartofwalesbikes.wordpress...nd-the-yellow-vest-riots-in-france/#more-2151
 

Ken H

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The rail reforms are going ahead, if watered down a little.
SNCF is to lose €35 billion of its debt (80%) to central government.
It will become a plc-equivalent and lose its guaranteed monopoly on regional and long distance services (competition model not decided yet).
Regional closures have been devolved to the regions to decide or fund.
Meanwhile lots of trains (main line and TER) have been ordered using the existing SNCF frame agreements with French manufacturers.
how come they dont have to advertise new train requirements across the EU, bit are allowed to do iirect awards to french companies?
 

Shaw S Hunter

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how come they dont have to advertise new train requirements across the EU, bit are allowed to do iirect awards to french companies?

The cynic in me would say that it's because France only follows the EU regulations that suits their own interests! In reality tenders are typically designed so as to make a French bid more likely to succeed and also include options for follow-on orders which remain valid for many years. Essentially France games the system rather well.
 

squizzler

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It is interesting to speculate what rail growth is locked into the French system due to reforms on the rail network and the Gillet Jaune protest on the highways. In the UK, I feel that the fuel protests in 2000 marked a breakdown in the consensus between the motoring interests and the government transport policy (this was the time of integrated transport of course). Those two conditions are matched now in France. Could we see a doubling in passengers like here in the UK? Could their growth be even faster due to having better assets to begin with and the benefits of later adoption allowing them to avoid the worst aspects of UK rail liberalisation?
 
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