Evoking the degradation of the tracks, signal boxes and signaling on a day of national strike in transport, like Thursday, March 23, is a bit like talking about a rope in the house of a hanged man. But everyday travelers (and shippers for goods) make this observation, already established in 2018 by the Spinetta report: the SNCF network, 28,000 kilometers long, is aging and degraded; the investments made in recent years have been insufficient to improve its performance.
The CEO of SNCF Réseau, auditioned Wednesday, March 22 in the Senate, however sees the end of the tunnel. Matthieu Chabanel believes that the “new railway deal” and the 100 billion euros promised by 2040 by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, will hand over the SNCF subsidiary ” in the race “. And racing means improving safety and punctuality to reduce car use and attract more travelers to a particularly low-carbon mode of transport thanks to nuclear-generated electricity.
The State, which had already taken over 35 billion euros in debt from SNCF Réseau, had to admit what the railway players were telling it: without additional credits, the success of the State-SNCF Réseau performance contract (2021-2030) For “develop the use of the train” was illusory. Without the additional effort announced on February 24, “the network would continue to age”, recalled Mr. Chabanel in front of the senators. With 1.5 billion euros per year by 2027 added to the current 3 billion, he estimates that he can stop the “slow degradation” of the network and initiate its modernization.
Conflicting injunctions
And there is, he admits, “a lot, a lot, a lot of work” to be done on the existing infrastructure to improve an overloaded RER line as well as the Bourges-Montluçon service. Also he sees from a “good eye” the involvement of the Société du Grand Paris, which is developing the Grand Paris Express, to help it with other missions entrusted by the government, in particular the deployment of new RER infrastructures in ten provincial cities.
Many questions, too: on the origin of the funds and the share of the regions, the training, loyalty and remuneration of qualified technical agents lacking in certain professions, the programming of investments, the capacity of SNCF Réseau to remain in the budgetary nails, when 20% of its projects exceed the initial endowment. And on relations with the State, which keeps control of this sensitive sector.
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