Laura Laplaud with AFP
modified to
09:06, February 24, 2023
Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne is due to announce on Friday a plan of 100 billion euros by 2040 for rail transport, the first concretization of which will be the launch of “metropolitan RERs” in major French cities. This amount, which corresponds to the estimate of the needs launched by the CEO of the SNCF Jean-Pierre Farandou – who envisaged this expenditure over fifteen years -, will not be entirely provided by the State, but will have to be shared by all stakeholders, communities, operators and investors.
“It is the fruit of a year of work,” said Christophe Béchu, Minister for Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, guest of Europe Matin on Friday. “Put more into rail, a little less into road, in other words, choose what allows us to get out of oil and continue to be on a good trajectory for the planet”, he continued.
“We have a 30-year-old network”
The government intends to base itself, among the IOC proposals, on a so-called “ecological planning” scenario. “We have 30,000 km of tracks and we have been under-investing in France for 40 years. We have a 30-year-old network, whereas in Germany we are 17 years old, which explains sometimes certain breakdowns”, he said at the microphone of Europe 1.
Elisabeth Borne must launch this “new railway deal” by receiving a report from the Infrastructure Orientation Council (COI), a college made up of elected officials and experts responsible for sorting out the various projects, both rail and road or rivers.
A plan to go to fewer roads?
Giving priority to the modernization of the rail network and daily transport, the scenario also wants to emphasize the renovation of roads and waterways, but excludes the rapid realization of “structuring projects eagerly awaited by some, (. ..) road or motorway”, according to an almost final version published by the information site Context in January.
“Strengthening public transport, setting up metropolitan RERs, can be a way of encouraging motorists to realize that there is a less carbon-intensive, less expensive way to get around. But in other sectors, we must not tell stories to the French: the car, we will need it and for a long time, given the development of our country”, underlined Christophe Béchu.
Developing clean automobiles and electric cars is one of the government’s objectives. For this, the executive must invest massively in charging stations and vehicles. A plan “already in billions of euros”, acknowledged the minister. “The priority today is for manufacturers to get started so that this ecological transition is good for jobs, for businesses and that it does not benefit China or foreign manufacturers. We have a timetable planning to stall.”
The Climate Action Network welcomes this announcement
The Climate Action Network, which federates the associations involved in the fight against climate change, for its part “welcomed” this announcement, stressing however that “the challenge now is that the government details a coherent mobility policy from start to finish end with our climate objectives by announcing the cessation of investments in all new road projects”.