Effect of Covid 19 on long distance transport services: Case of France

In this paper we explore the effect of COVID 19 on the long-distance transport services in France. These services have been strongly impacted by the different lockdowns imposed. However, up to now, few papers have considered this topic. The research question has for objective to characterize the market before COVID 19 to understand its adaptation and the strategies of the stakeholders faced with sanitary regulations. The empirical research is based on a large panel of data collected on four routes in France from September 2019 to November 2021 for four modes (coach, carpooling, train and air). Prices and frequencies are discussed as main variables. The main results must be considered carefully as the pandemic is still ongoing at the end of 2021. The first finding is the severe crisis in terms of supply during the first lockdown in March 2020. During the rest of the year 2020 and 2021, services increased slowly until recovering a similar level to that of 2019 for rail and carpooling. This is not yet the case for coach and air services. The second finding is the market concentration to the advantage of the dominant mode, train, especially in comparison to air, still subject to difficulty because of the reduction of the business market. The last finding highlights the persistence of conventional services during the different lockdowns and the high variability of low cost services which disappeared during the crisis. However, mainly thanks to the public support, no operator went bankrupt or left the market. Finally, low-cost services were recovering services faster in autumn 2021 than conventional services, thereby increasing their market share. The crisis on the business market may explain the difficulty for conventional services faced with low-cost services better adapted to the leisure market.