PARIS, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Elisabeth Borne announced on Friday that the French government wants to invest 100 billion euros in rail transport by 2040.
This sum would be shared between the State and all the actors concerned, specified the Prime Minister in a speech delivered on the occasion of the delivery of the report of the Council for Orientation of Infrastructures (COI).
“We are choosing to invest as a priority in the infrastructures that will allow us to make a success of the ecological transition, starting with rail, which is the backbone of mobility”, declared Elisabeth Borne.
“In concrete terms, this means that the State wishes to commit, alongside the SNCF, the European Union and local authorities, to a successful ‘New railway deal’, of the order of 100 billion euros in ‘here 2040.”
Last July, the CEO of SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, asked the State for an additional investment of 100 billion euros over 15 years to enable the company to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050, with ambition to double the share of rail in the transport of passengers and goods.
To meet these needs, the government wants to have an investment plan in rail infrastructure by June giving pride of place to the modernization of the network and daily transport, added Elisabeth Borne.
“For our fellow citizens, modernizing the network will mean more trains, better punctuality and shorter journey times,” she said.
The flagship project of the “New railway deal” should be the development of “metropolitan RERs” in the major provincial towns, on the model of the existing RER network in the Paris region.
“To talk about the metropolitan RERs is not only to talk about trains, it is to build complete transport networks for the French,” said Elisabeth Borne about this proposal by Jean-Pierre Farandou taken over by the President Emmanuel Macron in November.
To achieve this ambition, the Prime Minister promised local authorities that they could rely on “the expertise of the Société du Grand Paris”, which has been managing the project for the development of new metro lines in the suburbs for five years. Parisian.
“I know, we are deciding on a major investment, but it is necessary and essential,” she insisted.
SNCF announced on Thursday that it had generated record turnover of 41.45 billion euros last year thanks to the strong recovery in the use of its trains after the health restrictions linked to COVID-19. (Report by Elizabeth Pineau, written by Tangi Salaün, edited by Kate Entringer)
©2023 Thomson Reuters, all rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. “Reuters” and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies.