Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Wednesday the 19th of June.

If I said Kevin Speed, you might imagine that this is perhaps a footballer. Very good name for one.

In fact, it is the company in France that is most ahead in setting up so-called open access rail services.

This effectively is where you've got the infrastructure provider and they are allowing other companies to compete running services with the great monolith,

which is SNCF French Railways.

It's going to have an interesting new brand name, which is Elisto, but it won't be running for a few years yet.

I've been speaking to Claire Boniol. She is the chief commercial

officer for Kevin Speed and this is what she told me. We decided to launch this project two and a half

years ago because the rail market was opening in France, eventually.

And also so many people can't afford anymore living in big cities,

or they decided to change a bit their way of life with homeworking, etc. So we decided to contribute to the need to reduce the car impact and launch this brand based on

affordable mobility so this is high-speed trains so for UK people it will be 300 km per hour trains.

On three routes, Lille to Paris, Strasbourg to Paris and Leon to Paris,

and a cheap price because we will be in any case cheaper by minimum 30% less than existing SMCF offer.

Several chain companies can operate on the same route and it's up to the customer to choose.

And this is where we belong, open access.

And that's working fantastically well, for example, for travelers in Spain,

where there is intense competition, particularly on the route between Madrid and Barcelona.

But if I may, SNC-Freso, which is the infrastructure part of French railways, they have not been

rushing to open up.

And indeed, even though you started two and a half years ago, you won't be running trains until 2028.

That seems an awfully long time for you to have to wait.

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