“If it is not financed, this project will not be done” declared Jean-Pierre Farandou, during a hearing before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly.
By Le Figaro with AFP
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The president of the SNCF Jean-Pierre Farandou asked on Wednesday for a financing plan with sustainable resources and “a multiannual programming lawin order to guarantee the implementation of the 100 billion euro plan promised for the rail sector. “If it’s not funded, this project won’t happen.“, warned Jean-Pierre Farandou, during a hearing before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly.
The project, announced at the end of February by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, promises 100 billion euros of investment for the railways by 2040, an effort that the president of the SNCF has been defending for many months. You have to call “to all accessible funding sources“, he underlined.
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Jean-Pierre Farandou thus quoted the “new European taxation around carbon quotas” but also taxes, which might weigh on the types of transport which have a “more negative impact on the environment». «I am thinking of air transport, I am thinking of heavy goods vehicles and we also have motorways which are an important source of funding“, proposed the president of the railway group.
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Network regeneration and modernization
According to him, “part of the motorway windfall might be used to finance rail“. Local authorities must also be called upon to finance regional express service projects, the famous “Metropolitan RERs“that Emmanuel Macron called for with”TER trains every quarter of an hour» pour «irrigate» the big cities, according to Jean-Pierre Farandou.
The SNCF will also take its partup to its real but limited contributory capacity» and with a «red line: do not return to the deficit“Insisted Jean-Pierre Farandou. The boss of the public group finally said he hoped “that a broad cross-party consensus can create the necessary conditions for a multiannual programming law“in order to reinforce”the implementation of this future plan for rail transport in our country».
This provides in particular for the regeneration and modernization of the network, the average age of which is 30 years in France, “where in Germany it is 17 years and in Switzerland, which is a European reference in terms of railways, it is 15 years“. The annual investment must thus increase from 2.8 billion euros, an amount considered insufficient, to nearly 4 billion euros per year, which would make it possible to “maintain the entire network in good condition“Insisted Jean-Pierre Farandou.
