French Transport Picks Up

PARIS – Traffic on French trains, subways and buses started returning to normal Friday after striking transport workers ended a nine-day walkout over President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reforms.

Pockets of resistance remained, and restoring full service to the nationwide rail service and public transport in Paris and other cities was expected to take days.

But the victory for Sarkozy was clear as workers voted on Thursday to end the strike after talks opened on his plan to end special retirement privileges for half a million train drivers and other state employees.

Sarkozy is sticking by the reform, seen as an important and symbolic part of his broader plans for changing France, but the government is ready to discuss workers’ demands to modify its terms.

“The worst of the crisis is over,” Sarkozy’s aide for social issues, Raymond Soubie, said Friday on Europe-1 radio.

He dismissed concerns about the high economic cost of the strike, saying it was nothing compared to “the amplitude of the reform.” The government had estimated that the strikes cost France’s economy between $440 million and $513 million a day.

“The reform is on its way and will be achieved” after the talks, which start next week and should last about a month, he said.

Commuters and travelers welcomed the end of the strike after days of commuting on foot, bike and scooter.

Many trains in the Paris Metro were still packed – but much less so than earlier in the week, when hundreds mobbed onto scarce trains.

Traffic Friday was “disrupted but overall improving” on the Metro, though few lines were running at 100 percent, the RATP Paris transit authority said. Buses were running at about 80 percent. Traffic on the high-speed TGV trains was returning to normal “progressively,” the SNCF French rail service said.

“We seem to be moving toward a total return to work by the weekend,” Didier Larrigualdie, head of the Workers’ Force union at the RATP, said Thursday.

The government says the retirement reform is essential to modernizing the economy, and saving the indebted pension system. Sarkozy’s rivals, however, fear it spells the beginning of the end of the labor protections considered part of the French way of life.

Under the proposed plan, rail workers and others will have to work for 40 years to qualify for full pensions compared to 37.5 years currently.

Sarkozy faces other protest movements, from students to civil servants who have demanded talks over salary hikes before the end of the month.