With the sudden rise and spreading across of low-cost high-speed trains across France is on the ultimate rise, the leading European rail experts have warned that the concept risks “undermining” and “fragmenting” of a rail network. The concept was launched in 2013 when Ouigo – the low-cost brand for French Railways introduced a third class to rail travel in France. During the launch, SNCF was facing increasing competition from Easyjet and Ryanair on domestic links.

Ouigo has already expanded itself on July this year with daily trains between Paris and Toulouse. The latest inter-city link has a fare of €65 for the first departure, compared with €121 on ordinary SNCF trains.

Many ideas have been incorporated from budget airlines and the first class has been removed, with 100 extra seats squeezed into an eight-carriage double-deck Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV). This train has a system which passenger should book the tickets online and print out or carry the very ticket with them in their smartphones costing around €10 one way and if you book the tickets that very day it shall cost ten times the original value.

Since the launch services of Lyon, Marseille and Montpellier, the network has expanded to include Bordeaux, Lille, Nice, Strasbourg and many other cities as a part of its route expending connectivity across. Nicky Gardner, the co-author of Europe by Rail, said: “The whole point of the rail is connectivity and flexibility. But Ouigo’s point-to-point business model hives off some plum routes and so undermines the whole idea of the network.”

Mark Smith, the founder of the Seat61.Com international rail website, describes the concept as “a budget airline on rails.”This reduces the frequency of the main SNCF TGV product and fragments the existing network. With the Pan-European rail liberalisation taking effect from 2020 is really hopeful that new “open-access” entrants will stimulate competition will compel or at least persuade more travellers to take rail route as a preference than airlines. France is looking out for operators competed to provide the very best on-board service at reasonable prices to bring a revolutionary change in the total execution process.