France « The Transport Politic

As SNCF Loses Its Public Focus, the Future of French Rail is in Question

March 2nd, 2010 |

» As Europe pushes competition in the railway sector, the role of the public enterprise slowly fades away.

The first threat came earlier this year, when French national railway operator SNCF signaled that it was considering cutting some TGV high-speed train routes between the nation’s regional capitals. Facing increasing track use fees and the economic recession, one in five TGV services now lose money, and SNCF seemed ready to stop operating direct services from Bordeaux, Nantes, and Lille to Strasbourg. Many people hoping to travel from destinations

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Paris Officials Push Huge Suburban Transit Investment to Increase Metropolitan Mobility

January 19th, 2010 |

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» Of the dozens of rapid transit projects under construction and planned for the French capital, few are aimed directly at the center city.

The civil unrest that spread across many of France’s impoverished banlieues in October and November 2005 made clear the degree to which spatial separation between classes had resulted in unequal distribution of resources and consequent feelings of disenfranchisement by members of the country’s most needy.

Nowhere is this inequality more evident than in the sprawling Paris region, whose 11.7 million inhabitants form one of Europe’s two largest metropolitan areas.* For years, commercial activity has been growing in

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With Competition in High-Speed Operation, Who Wins?

December 29th, 2009 |

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» France will be a battleground for intercity rail travel beginning in 2012. Whether the country’s citizens will benefit is up for debate.

Last week, Le Figaro reported that Veolia Environnement will be working with Italy’s Trenitalia national rail company to compete on French high-speed rail routes beginning in 2012. The ramifications of the move are significant: it will open up existing lines to multiple operators, producing consumer choice currently not available because of a decades-old monopoly on intercity operations by French national rail corporation SNCF. This competition is mandated by European Union law, which is intended to reduce transportation costs by

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Will Competition Bankrupt the European National Rail Companies?

November 2nd, 2009 |

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» Competition on European lines, and the related separation of infrastructure from operations, could spell financial trouble for public companies like SNCF and Deutsche Bahn.

If the competition between Europe’s two largest national rail operators SNCF and Deutsche Bahn (DB) was to be expected, it didn’t seem like it would come down this hard.

Last week in an interview with the Financial Times Deutschland, Ulrich Homburg, head of passenger transport at DB, declared that he was readying a “bloody battle” with his French peers. With international rail services opening up to competition on the French market beginning next month, you would expect Germany’s

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