Great Western Coffee Shop

The French government today announced that the proposal to build a new regional airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (between Nantes and Rennes) will be abandoned. Instead, Nantes Atlantique will be exapnded a little, and the administrations at Rennes will be supported if they want to expand that too. This will be seen by most people as a defeat of central government by large-scale civil disobedience by the zadistes, though the official reason is the lack of a substantial consensus.

There are railway implications of this. The plan included new (or part-new) lines to the airport from Nantes and Rennes, which would also provide a faster service between those cities than the current one via Redon. However, Edouard Philippe (PM) didn't mention that, nor rail links to the new old airport at Nantes (there is a local line right past it, but no station) from Nantes and from Rennes.

What he did refer to was a study into giving both cities TGVs direct to international airports, i.e. paris CDG and (less so) Orly. The logic here is that NDDL was going to give the region its own international flights, so this is a ... gesture.

I guess we will now get a detailed proposal, but there was am earlier "mediaton" report. This looked at both sides of the argument, though only to assist the government in its decision It certainly did argue for new links to Nantes, either by an SNCF station or by extending the city tram from Neustrie (less than 3 km).