Who wants to help shut down some cigarette-puffing, rule-breaking French commuters?

France's state-owned railway is facing a vexing problem and — mon Dieu! — it's looking for advice from Pink Blog readers.

Here's the le scoop:

Earlier this month, I received an email from Marie-Dominique Bonardi, who'd recently finished reading Drive.  She wrote:

I am a professor at Sorbonne University, I teach public relations. I also have my own tiny PR agency in Paris. I come to you with a case and questions.

 

The company that runs the train in France has a problem in a station. Smoking is forbidden in trains. But a group of people takes one wagon for themselves, and spends the whole journey smoking and preventing other people from using the wagon.

 

No one managed to stop them. This has been like that for 10 years. Now SNCF really does not know how to fix the issue and one of their directors came to me.

Marie-Dominique reached out to me for advice. And I suggested to her that we crowdsource the problem — because PinkBlog readers have an excellent record of devising great solutions to tough challenges (see one such example here).

So . . . over to you, mes amis. What should the train company do?

Offer your solution in the Comments section below. I'll compile the best (and most interesting) proposals in a subsequent blog post and we'll send all the recommendations to the French. To get us started, I've listed four ideas of my own as the first Comment.

Allons-y!