Jean Castex wants to restore its letters of nobility to rail freight. This morning he went to the combined transport site in Bonneuil-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne), accompanied by a large ministerial delegation, including the Minister of Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili and the Minister Transport delegate Jean-Baptiste Djebbari. He announced free tolls for rail freight until the end of 2020 and the creation of new rail axes, in particular between Bayonne and Cherbourg, and between Sète and Calais.
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" There are tolls to take the paths (...) that the freight trains take with the passenger trains, so we have decided that these tolls should be free until the end of 2020 and a division by two, it is a very significant effort, in 2021, in the price of these tolls ”, declared Mr. Castex to the press during a trip to the combined transport site of Bonneuil-sur-Marne (Val de Marne).
An "extremely strong" signal
" It is an extremely strong signal that the government is giving and it is a first step in what I will call the rail reconquest plan ," he added. This represents 63 million euros in 2020 and another 63 million in 2021, according to Matignon.
Thanks to these incentives, the state hopes to see 20,000 fewer heavy goods vehicles on the roads in 2021, corresponding to 425,000 tonnes of CO2 emitted less. The government also has “the firm intention of reopening and developing rail highways ,” added Jean Castex.
Calls for projects will be launched by the end of the year for the Bayonne-Cherbourg, Sète-Calais and Perpignan-Rungis lines, which the State would like to see extended from Antwerp to Barcelona. " You have in front of you a Prime Minister who was bruised by the Perpignan-Rungis affair, the primeurs train ", suspended for a year, said Jean Castex, elected municipal in Prades (Pyrénées-Orientales).
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Until July 2019, this “ early bird train ”, made up of refrigerated wagons, transported fruit and vegetables produced in the Pyrénées-Orientales to the Rungis market every night. The line was to be relaunched at the end of 2019 to the multimodal platform of Valenton (Val-de-Marne), rather than to Rungis where the station must be modernized, but customers have not rushed.