We knew about hotels and cruises, and even a few restaurants scattered here and there, but we didn’t have trains. In France, those are also done: the new Optimum offer for business travelers on the new Paris-Lyon TGV high-speed trains excludes children under 12 years of age.
On its page describing the Optimum offer, the railway company indicates (indicated, because now there is no trace) that “children” do not have “access” to these classes.
What happened
The controversy arises from a sentence included in the conditions of sale of the new Optimum Plus class of the Paris-Lyon TGVs:
To ensure maximum comfort on board the dedicated space, children are not accepted.
That phrase is then taken up by a podcast and by a very popular association in France (“Les Adultes de demain”), which interprets it as proof that the SNCF is introducing spaces “no kids” on trains, adhering to the trend – already widespread in hotels and restaurants – of excluding children to ensure peace of mind for adults.
From there the media case exploded with accusations of discrimination and hostility towards families, accusations of a “dangerous” signal for the birth rate and comparisons with public places forbidden to minors. The central point, however, is that these are not entire carriages “forbidden for children”, nor even TGVs without minors on board.
We talk about:
So the controversy arises more from an unfortunate communicative formulation (“children are not accepted”) than from a real policy of generalized exclusion? In fact, everything starts from a sentence present in the conditions of sale:
“To ensure maximum comfort on board the dedicated space, children are not acceptedA small communication gap, essentially.
The response of the SNCF
No, children are not excluded from our TGVs.
Optimum Plus represents only 8% of the seats available on trains from Monday to Friday. In concrete terms, these are 39 seats on trains that have between 510 and 634. This means that 92% of the seats remain accessible to all on weekdays and that 100% of the seats are accessible to all on weekends.
View this post on Instagram
Furthermore, after criticism, the company clarified that access to the Optimum Plus class is permitted from the age of 12, a clarification that initially did not appear explicitly in the conditions of sale.
The SNCF also underlines that it has always refused requests to create carriages entirely forbidden to children:
We have never accepted the numerous requests from customers who asked for carriages without minors. The train is a place of common life, open to all.
The company also reminds you that each TGV has nursery spaces and that there are carriages dedicated to families. In essence, there are no TGVs “forbidden for children” nor carriages that are entirely off limits. There is a small premium space, limited in the number of seats, on weekdays, on a single line, designed for professional needs.
The real fuse of the case was the communication isolated from the context, which transformed a narrow commercial choice into a powerful cultural symbol, making the measure appear as a form of ideological exclusion.
And in a climate already sensitive to the issue of “no kids”, this was enough to make the media fire explode.
