Which side are you on? No, really, I ask sincerely, because I can’t quite tell which is the right one, and the story has been making headlines in France for days and days. It could have just slipped under the radar; after all, few people will care about the SNCF offering a new type of first-class travel.
The cost of living crisis is biting on the other side of the Channel just as it is biting here; presumably, few people are looking at their finances right now and trying to find ways of spending more cash. Still, French travellers will now be able to choose “Optimum” train tickets when going to and from Paris.
The new system, though expensive, offers more flexible tickets and dedicated customer service. For yet another fee, travellers moving between the capital and Lyon will also have access to a personal host, as well as dining on board. So far, so unremarkable.
Instead, what has drawn the ire of politicians and campaigners is the fact that Optimum carriages will be out of bounds for anyone under the age of 12, effectively turning them into child-free zones.
“Giving the impression that adult comfort depends on the absence of children is shocking,” French children’s commissioner Sarah El Haïry said on television. “We can’t say, ‘Look out, we’re having fewer children, we’ve got demographic problems’ then send out such blunt signals.”
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Speaking on a radio programme, host of the Les Adultes De Demain (The Adults of Tomorrow) podcast Stéphanie d’Esclaibes said the move “really amounts to direct discrimination against children, and that’s why I think this matter is causing such a stir today”. “I understand needing quiet on the TGV when you want to work, but I also think this shouldn’t come at the expense of a social group, namely children.”
Speaking to the press earlier this week, former prime minister and current SNCF boss Jean Castex said he was “astonished” by the scale of the controversy, and pointed out that the presence of quiet spaces for business travellers did not undermine the presence of kids and families elsewhere on the company’s trains.
So, again: which side are you on? It seems, on the one hand, quite remarkable that Optimum users are allowed to bring their pet onboard with them for a small fee, yet can’t travel with human beings who happen to be on the younger side. On the other… well, I get it. Who hasn’t spent a train journey trying desperately to work while some bratty children ran up and down the corridors, or screamed at the top of their lungs?
Then again, it absolutely is true and worth saying that we live in a world that is increasingly hostile to children. Families are getting priced out of cities and, even if they can make it work, they will often find themselves with vanishingly few free or affordable places in which to entertain their brood.
Somehow we have this incredible fertility crisis where last year France, for example, saw more deaths than births for the first time since the Second World War, and yet it feels like our political class is doing little to address it.
This may be why so many parents and activists had what felt like such a disproportionate response to these new first-class tickets. Taken in a vacuum, the new service makes sense, especially in an era of slim laptops and reliable wifi. A train seat can now function as an office desk and, just as you wouldn’t have braying toddlers hanging out by the water cooler, it makes sense to create spaces where people can get work done.
There’s nothing inherently evil about having the odd train carriage that happens to be child-free but, if launched in the context of a world where so few places cater to children, businesses and lawmakers shouldn’t be surprised if parents start fighting back. Clearly, for many of them, the last straw happened several straws ago.
This is where I think I may fall, in the end. The side I’m on isn’t the side of the people who are right, as I do believe they’re overreacting on this specific issue. Still, the world is currently against them, and so they need all the help they can get. What’s that? Would I book an Optimum ticket, if I had the cash? Erm, I’m afraid you’ll have to speak to my lawyers…
