RAIL & ROADS
Every line runs to Paris, including the ones that should not
The star network and what it costs the provinces.
- Lyon to Bordeaux is harder than either to Paris
The network radiates from the capital, so cross-country journeys are slow and expensive in a country that built the fastest trains in Europe.
- A ring road that decides who is inside
The périphérique is infrastructure and boundary at once, and 'intra-muros' is a social term as much as a geographic one.
- The slow trains are the ones that hold the country together
Regional services carry the commuting that the TGV never touches, and their funding is decided by regions rather than the state.