A report into the condition, usage and prospects of almost 9 000 route-km of secondary railway is to be handed to government before the end of March. According to Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne, the report will form part of a ‘battle plan’ to save a broad swathe of the French network.
Rail advocates and transport user groups such as FNAUT have been monitoring with growing concern the retrenchment of rural passenger services over recent years, with several routes seeing their trains suspended indefinitely, usually because maintenance costs are perceived to be too high. Most of the routes affected have been branch lines, but some cuts have gone deeper — since 2016 for example, there have been no direct trains between Clermont-Ferrand and Saint-Etienne, two important regional centres. Today it is extremely difficult to travel by direct train from one side of the Massif Central to the other.
However, the explosion of discontent manifested since late last year by the so-called gilets jaunes protestors has provided an unexpected source of solace. The protests started partly in response to mounting fuel prices in rural areas, and a related complaint from some in the movement was the perceived lack of alternative transport to the private car. This in turn has helped push the future of the secondary lines back up the political agenda.
To try to reduce this burden, SNCF Réseau is looking to develop a ‘toolkit of methodologies’ which the regions could draw on to keep costs down. This is expected to include options for low-cost signalling, intensive shuttle services using lightweight vehicles, and alternatives to ballasted trackforms.
The loss of 9,000 km could be considered a French equivalent to ‘Serpell’. It could also be viewed as a warning sign about the national affordability in parallel of a TGV network AND a ‘classic’ system for a nation where many areas have low density populations. (Affordability alert for full HS2 ?)
The politics of Serpell were unacceptable in Britain, and led to fairly radical ways of getting train and infrastructure renewal and replacement costs down for the larger size of network to remain affordable. British Rail was eventually intelligent about how to address costs within its control.
It will be an interesting test of French politics whether a consistent ‘classic’ network is retained at all, and if so whether for political or affordability reasons, or both!
Without wishing to stray too far into HS2 arguments (for the usual reason), one could note that the current plans for HS2 do not amount to anything remotely approaching the “parallel network” which the LGVs (arguably) constitute in France. For all the hype (and all the cost) all we will probably end up with is one extra pair of tracks between London and The North.