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Off topic, I saw a Renfe Ave yesterday at Toulouse Matabiau, on the recently-opened Barcelona connection. I scrambled across the station (not across the tracks, via the underpass) thinking that a photo of this new phenomenon would be worth adding to a rail diary here. But before I could reach the locomotive, the train left the station. No pic...
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue Jun 3rd, 2014 at 03:21:56 PM EST
Toulouse? I could understand Nice or Montpelier but what is the transport imperative between Barca and Toulouse?

keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Wed Jun 4th, 2014 at 02:45:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Bordeaux to Barcelona?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 4th, 2014 at 04:10:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes. Also, without whipping up regional-capital rivalry (hot at the moment with Hollande's look-I'm-actually-doing-something proposals to reduce the number of regions) Toulouse is a considerably larger city than Montpellier (Toulouse urban area c. 1 300 000 pop, Montpellier urban area c. 400 000). Both the Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées regions are part of the transborder Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion with Catalonia.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed Jun 4th, 2014 at 05:10:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Looking at AENA statistics for the air competition in previous years, I find a curious pattern. While there was almost no traffic between Barcelona and Montpellier and 20-30,000 between Barcelona and Toulouse, the traffic between Barcelona and Nice has exploded from a few tens of thousands to almost 200,000 last year. Sadly I can't find rail statistics, but it should have been minimal, the main alternative must have been road.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Wed Jun 4th, 2014 at 11:20:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Nice is France's largest airport outside Paris, and, um, money...
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed Jun 4th, 2014 at 11:29:21 AM EST
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