You want to travel from Paris to Caen, in Calvados. Are you travelling as a group of four? Despite the cost of fuel and the tolls, driving will be cheaper. Now suppose you are travelling alone. As long as the SNCF operated as a public service, there was no question: you had to take the train. But today? We visited oui.sncf.com, the new train-booking website. A basic one-way ticket costs between €24 and €60. Now let's see how much driving would cost: the distance is 234 km, and a car consuming 6 liters per 100 km would use around €44 worth of fuel for the round trip. The toll is about €24 each way, or €48 for the round trip. The journey could cost you less, even if you are traveling alone! Hardly an incentive to take the train… Why does the French state, the principal shareholder, allow such abuses? Granted, the SNCF is poorly managed, but no one will convince us that each passenger-kilometer costs it so much that it has no choice but to charge these fares. Especially since recent investment can hardly be described as colossal. The result on TGV routes… is the same. For example, driving from Paris to Grenoble costs around €96 (€48 for fuel and €48 in tolls), while a train ticket costs between €85 and €120—or even more if it can be changed. To reach Isère, driving is better value for two people, and even for one person outside off-peak periods. The price per kilometer is not constant here: it depends on passenger demand. The SNCF raises its fares at busy times and lowers them when it is unsure of filling its trains. Here too, the notion of public service has disappeared.