French rail groups continue push to reopen closed lines

Rail groups protesting against the French state abandoning historic railway lines vow to continue applying pressure ahead of a key report to parliament.

The Conseil d'orientation des infrastructures (COI) is due to present its strategy for how state infrastructure should be financed to MPs and regional councils in spring. 

The section on railways is likely to be particularly scrutinised.

Elected officials do not have to follow the recommendations of the COI, which is mainly composed of engineers and government accountants.

However, if the COI recommends, as rail groups hope, that money be spent on reopening shut lines, it will add to the pressure already on the government to allocate such funding. 

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Bordeaux-Lyon train criticised

Groups pushing for the reopening of lines that have been closed in the last decade were shocked when state rail company SNCF recently announced it will restart a service between Bordeaux and Lyon.

Using TGV trains, the route will take passengers north to Paris’s suburbs before joining the main Paris–Lyon line. 

Before 2014, there were two lines used by SNCF’s Corail trains offering a 500km direct route between Bordeaux and Lyon. Both were shorter than the proposed four-hour TGV line, but slower. Each took around seven hours, including stops at many towns and cities along the route.

“The lines were shut because the state and local authorities did not want to pay for their upkeep,” François Lemaire, vice-president of the Fédération nationale des associations d'usagers des transports (FNAUT) for Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, told The Connexion.

“But with the shutdown went a whole section of the economic and social network in the Massif Central.

“As well as carrying passengers from Bordeaux to Lyon, the lines allowed people to travel easily to neighbouring towns and cities, and gave businesses the option to send goods by train instead of by lorries.”

TER trains still use parts of the lines but the regional councils of Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes are unable to coordinate services to allow travel across the regions without hours-long waits in stations.

Mr Lemaire said many other railway lines were threatened because the state and regional councils could not agree on how they should be maintained.

One recent shutdown was the line between Angoulême (Charente) and Limoges (Haute-Vienne), which was closed due to a lack of maintenance in 2018. After years of lobbying, it was agreed that the line be repaired by 2030. 

However, the promised cash for the repair, now estimated to be around €150 million due to continued deterioration, has yet to materialise.

“In theory the government has a list of ‘structural’ railway lines which it says it will put money into,” said Mr Lemaire. 

“These include lines which have been doubled by TGV lines and which are now used by TER trains and freight trains, and other lines where there is a lot of traffic.

“But the recently shut lines are not on the ‘structural’ list, and until that changes there is no chance they will reopen.”

Will high-speed links be critcised?

 The COI report will also be scrutinised for what it says about the proposed TGV line between Bordeaux and Toulouse/Dax.

According to leaks published in Les Echos, it will recommend that money could be better spent on updating existing tracks, rather than ploughing an estimated €14billion on 327km of new high-speed rail.

The line is due to be financed by a mix of state and regional funding, with the latter coming from a rise in local and tourist taxes.

According to Les Echos, the COI says the high-speed railway should only be built if private funds also invest – something which is unlikely to happen as the line is not expected to generate enough money to repay the investment.

The ecologist mayor of Bordeaux, Pierre Hurmic, is opposed to the TGV line, arguing the money should be spent on improving commuter trains into the city.