The 20th-century dictator Benito Mussolini was famously credited (deserving or otherwise) with “making the trains run on time” in Italy.

About now, France could stand more than a little improvement in its trains’ on-time performance.

That’s four consecutive French trains now, that I have met or ridden, that failed to arrive on schedule.

None of them were rickety locals. Two were the high-speed TGV trains plying the main north-south route to or from Paris. The other two fall into the intercity category — which was the top end of the French system, before the high-speed trains were added.

All four of them … late.

Sometimes, France seems to be a slightly bogus member of the First World. The performances of their railroads certainly contribute to that sense.

Railroad workers here are known to stage a strike every now and then, to make sure the government doesn’t forget them. What usually happens, in that case, is a significant reduction in the number of trains, and a high likelihood they will not be sticking to any particular schedule.

But even when everyone is (in theory) showing up for work, the French certainly seem to have trouble with on-time performance.

Apologists for the north/south TGV lines apparently will be making a habit of blaming poor performance on “improvements” between the southern towns of Agde and Sete.

The two trains I dealt with in the past few weeks were each more than 20 minutes late. Because of the construction. Or whatever.

The other two late trains were on the Paris/Normandy lines. Going out, we sat in the station at Caen for 40 minutes. Yes, 40. We got a couple of announcements over the intercom that “we are late, sorry for the inconvenience, blah blah blah” that were answered by hoots of derision by some of our French fellow-travelers.

On this particular train, we had given ourselves 41 minutes of French-railroad wiggle room to meet up with a tour guide. Certainly, that ought to be plenty, but we used up 40 minutes of it sitting at Caen. That was a nerve-racking span of time during which we wondered if our guide in Bayeux would stick around past the appointment meeting time. (He did, after I ran off the train platform to find him.)

On the way north to Paris, in the evening, the train was late coming into the Bayeux station, from Cherbourg. Why? No explanation was given. The train was four minutes late — after we had been warned upon arrival that it would be 12 minutes late. As it turns out, we were about 12 minutes late by the time we got to the next stop.

It seems as if rail users here need to assume French trains will be late. That we were random victims of poor performance stretches credulity when it happens four consecutive times.

(And statistics posted by the French rail system, known by the acronym SNCF, seem to concede one out of every eight TGV or intercity trains is late. And that may be understating the problem.)

This is not an acceptable performance by France and its train system. Not when compared to Japan and Germany and others.

The government and the rail authorities don’t seem to care particularly — or they would have fixed this by now.

Meantime, for any route more than a few miles long, it seems a good idea to give yourself an hour of cushion, taking into account the likelihood a French train will be late.