France French reform grapples
This month the French government will publish its draft proposals to restructure French railways with the expectation that a fully-fledged infrastructure manager will emerge. Rather than waiting for legislation to come into force in 2015, French National Railways (SNCF) has already started working more closely with French Rail Network (RFF), as SNCF president Mr Guillaume Pepy revealed in an exclusive interview with David Briginshaw in Paris.
F
RANCE already has a unique relationship between its two main railway players - French National Railways (SNCF) and French Rail Network (RFF) - due to the fact that RFF was set up primarily to manage SNCF’s long-term debt rather than as a conventional infrastructure manager. As a result RFF is a lean organisation of managers, engineers and planners purely responsible for building new lines and upgrading the existing network, leaving SNCF to operate and maintain the infrastructure as well as the trains. The reform process aims to create a fully-fledged infrastructure manager and a national train operator under a still to be fully defined umbrella organisation. “This will be a French model rather than a German, Belgian, British or any other model,” explains SNCF president Mr Guillaume Pepy. “The idea of having one single system for Europe is foolish. Each country has its own history and the needs of countries such as Germany and Luxembourg differ greatly. The reform will strictly comply with existing European regulations and will be an element of the European Union’s Fourth Railway Package.” The reform process was launched by
the previous Sarkozy government and has been taken up by the current
20
government of President François Hollande. It is a slow process because it has to be discussed by a wide range of individuals and organisations with an interest in rail. Draft proposals will be published by the government this month and presented to parliament by the end of the year with a view to implementing the reforms in 2015. The overriding objective is to improve the quality and efficiency of the national railway to drive down costs and generate more revenue. Pepy says the current set up has been a great driver of cost and complication, resulting in a
system which few people understand fully. “I think the French system has suffered from complexity, misalignment of interest, and inefficiency,” Pepy explains. While the new system will be designed to ensure the new infrastructure manager and national operator work together as partners, the government is adamant there will be a level playing field for all train operators, whether state-owned or private, to avoid discrimination. The reform will have three aims:
to fund the rail system properly and deal with debt issue
IRJ June 2013
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