Question 16572 — rail transport

Summary

Mr. Christian Girard draws the attention of the Minister of Transport to the worrying aging of the national rail network, its consequences on the continuity of public rail service and France's capacity to have resilient, efficient and sovereign transport infrastructure. France has long been recognized as one of the major train countries, thanks to its industrial know-how, its structuring network and its development of high speed. However, for several years, alerts have been increasing about the state of the national rail network, the aging of which now has a direct impact on the regularity of traffic, the attractiveness of rail transport, land use planning and the image of the country. As early as 2005, the so-called “Rivier” audit, conducted by the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne, warned of the deterioration in the state of the network. and the insufficiency of the means devoted to its renewal. In 2012, the revisit of this audit noted that the efforts undertaken were going in the right direction, but remained insufficient to sustainably reverse the aging of certain parts of the network, particularly on the structuring axes and critical equipment. Recent episodes of high heat have once again highlighted the vulnerability of infrastructure French railways. The phenomena of expansion of the rails, the tensions on the catenaries, the fragilities of the electrical installations and the difficulties encountered by certain rolling stock have led to slowdowns, preventive cancellations of trains and significant disruptions for users. These difficulties cannot be reduced to simple climatic hazards: they also reveal the consequences of lasting delay in network regeneration. The draft performance contract between the State and SNCF Réseau for the period 2024-2033 plans to gradually increase the envelope devoted to the regeneration of the network to nearly 5 billion euros per year by 2033. It also reveals an additional need estimated at 1.5 billion euros per year from 2028 in order to renovate around 1,000 kilometers of tracks per year, 330 kilometers of catenaries, as well as engineering structures and other essential components of the network. This essential catch-up, however, raises questions about the collective cost of the accumulated delay. What the Nation did not invest sufficiently yesterday is today paid more dearly by taxpayers, users, communities and the national economy: delays, cancellations, loss of productivity, drop in attractiveness, deterioration of the image of the countries and weakening of sovereignty in terms of essential infrastructure. A sovereign and efficient nation cannot be imagined without a reliable, maintained, anticipated and resilient transportation network. In this regard, rail constitutes a national strategic asset, serving the ecological transition, economic competitiveness, territorial continuity and public service. Also, he asks him what measures the The Government intends to take to guarantee that the financial trajectory announced for the regeneration of the rail network will actually be maintained over the long term and what measures to adapt to climate change will be integrated into regeneration operations, in order to limit slowdowns and cancellations of trains during episodes of high heat.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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