What are the light and ultralight train projects launched by the SNCF worth?

The electric vehicle, the size of a large minivan, slows down, turns right, leaves the paved departmental road and continues its journey on… the railway. The video may well be made up of computer-generated images, but it has a small effect. Flexy – this is the name of this rail-road prototype – is one of SNCF’s innovations in terms of ultralight trains, developed in partnership with the start-up Milla (designer of this battery-powered shuttle) and Michelin (creator of the hybrid wheel that can go from asphalt to iron).

Flexy, which aims to offer mixed rail-road transport in villages and remote areas, is one of the three experiments of the public rail group intended to revitalize the small lines, known as “fine service”, of the territory. The projects are going crescendo in terms of capacity. After Flexy and its nine seats, the second innovation, Draisy, is a rail shuttle with thirty seats (eighty maximum). The concept, developed with the Alsatian industrialist Lohr, is a small battery-powered electric train, which is recharged at the station, intended for low-traffic lines and journeys of up to 100 kilometers.

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The latest project, the Innovative Light Rail (TLI), capable of carrying one hundred seated passengers, is more like ordinary rail. The machine, designed with the manufacturers Alstom and CAF, also passes through the railways of the national network, unlike the other two, which use downgraded lines. But the weight reduction of the TLI (10 tonnes per axle against 17 tonnes for a TER) reduces maintenance costs and track wear.

“Pressure from the regions”

SNCF estimates that the TLI could be put into commercial operation in 2028-2029. Flexy and Draisy would see the light of day even faster – in 2026, suggests the public group. At the moment, in Carquefou (Loire-Atlantique), near Nantes, the SNCF is carrying out, in partnership with Stellantis, autonomous shuttle tests on a former tarred railway line, which has become a test track.

“We are putting the innovation capacities of the SNCF at the service of increasing the modal share of the train”, explains Carole Desnost, the company’s director of research and innovation. Jean-Pierre Farandou, the CEO of SNCF, has given his group the objective of doubling the share of train travel in France by 2030. In sparsely populated areas, where there are hardly any other solutions than the car and where the rail network is shrinking, these innovative materials would make it possible to offer a more suitable and less expensive offer for the community than conventional trains, while offering feeder options to the main stations.

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