The Socio-Cultural Background of the Differential Charges System in French Inter-City Railways

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to clarify factors that widely support inter-city railway fares by time slot and by day of the week in France from both a social and cultural aspect. The first aspect being that in France, there is a clear distinction between inner-city transportation, which is mainly for commuting workers and students, and inter-city transportation, which is mainly for tourists. The second aspect being that engineers working for the government worked on setting prices for public transportation and theorizing differential charges, which is specific to France. As a result, it was revealed that differential charges were convincingly shown to serve the interests of society as a whole.