A little over a year ago, Emmanuel Macron announced his desire to create RER “in ten French metropolises”. The law allowing the development of these new services was definitively adopted on Monday December 18 in Parliament, despite remaining doubts about the financing of these projects.
The text was voted unanimously by the Senate, a few days after adoption in the National Assembly. It provides a legal framework for these major construction projects. “metropolitan regional express services” (SERM), the equivalent of the RER in Ile-de-France.
“It is a positive project of transformation, ecological and social, intended to facilitate daily transport and involve all French people in the ecological transition”, greeted the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, in a press release. This law will ultimately allow “for millions of French people in the peripheries to have access to public transport solutions”he emphasized to the senators.
Clément Beaune made this project one of the priorities of his ministry and a pillar of the future plan for transport in February. Elisabeth Borne then promised 100 billion euros for transport by 2040.
The law provides in particular to expand the missions of the Société du Grand Paris, renamed Société des grands Projets, to put these SERMs on track in around ten large metropolises, within ten years. SGP will be the prime contractor for the construction of new infrastructure or railway lines, while SNCF Réseau will retain its role of improving and maintaining the existing network.
The question of financing
But it is about offering more than just an improved rail service, with trains running every 10 to 15 minutes, and radial connections crossing major metropolises. These SERMs must combine express cars, cycle networks, carpooling, to encourage car-free mobility in all its forms around major French cities.
“There is still a lot to do in our territories to see ten regional express services emerge within ten years. We must remain lucid: this text does not resolve the problem of financing, in terms of investment and especially in operation”nevertheless alerted the Senate rapporteur, Philippe Tabarot (Les Républicains).
For the moment, the government has promised an initial envelope of 767 million euros to help start the projects, broken down within the framework of the State-region plan contracts (CPER), currently being signed.
The Nantes SERM, for example, has already been allocated 101 million euros by 2027 and “will be one of the first to see the light of day in France”promised the government and the Pays de la Loire region when signing the CPER in mid-November.
Projects already advanced in Bordeaux, Lille and Strasbourg
In Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, 162 million euros will be released to finance preliminary studies and the first works on rail services to Aix-Marseille, Toulon, Nice and the Avignon metropolitan area.
Le Monde Buying Guides
Reusable water bottles
The best water bottles to replace disposable bottles
Read
Elsewhere, such as in Strasbourg, the project is already well advanced, but it experienced setbacks at its launch due not to the infrastructure, but to equipment and personnel problems according to SNCF Réseau. In Bordeaux ” without a doubt [le projet le] most advanced in France, with that of Lille »according to Clément Beaune, the project has started and must gradually ramp up to be completed in 2030.
However, some SERMs are not expected before 2035, such as in Aix-Marseille or Grenoble, given the scale of the necessary work.
The sums required to complete these projects are colossal. The total cost of the Metropolitan RERs is estimated at between 15 and 20 billion euros by the Infrastructure Orientation Council. A national conference on financing is to be held by June 30.