No hazing for Matthieu Chabanel, who succeeded Luc Lallemand as CEO of SNCF Réseau last fall.
Heard in the Senate on Wednesday on the eve of the ninth day of mobilization against the pension reform, he was not entitled to any questions on the long strikes very followed in transport.
It is true that he does not deal with the circulation of trains but with the maintenance of the rails and their optimization.
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A month after the announcement by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, of a 100 billion euro plan to boost the train, he rather focused on specifying how to put this ambition to music.
"This means going from 3 billion to 4.5 billion per year invested in the network
,
with a gradual increase in budgets by 2027
," he explains.
An additional billion will be devoted to the regeneration of the network, all the operations which make it possible to rejuvenate the average age of the tracks and rails.
Read alsoRenovation of the SNCF network: who will pay the bill for 100 billion euros?
On the program, for example, the replacement of catenaries on line C of the RER in the Paris region and in the south of the Gironde, which date from the 1930s. Five hundred million will also be allocated to the modernization of the network to manage to circulate more of trains.
An approach which consists in particular in installing the ERTMS computer system more quickly throughout the territory.
The wait is very high: Amiens-Paris, Montluçon-Bourges, Paray-le-Monial-Lyon… there are countless lines where the service is very poor.
"But for the moment, we have no timetable for accelerating the deployment"
, recognizes Matthieu Chabanel.
And the 50% increase in the works of SNCF Réseau in four years is not obvious: companies in the sector (railway works, signaling, etc.) are not sized for this.
“We have to make the railway sector more attractive, think about jobs and salaries, because today it is difficult to recruit for certain functions, such as that of electrician”
, argues Matthieu Chabanel.
Failed debut in Strasbourg
SNCF Réseau has also started working on the presidential ambition confirmed by Élisabeth Borne: to provide ten major regional cities with RER.
In other words, trains running at least every quarter of an hour.
The choice of these cities will be made shortly when the State-region plan contracts (CPER) are signed, with necessarily a financial contribution from the regions concerned.
We should have been firmer, explaining that adding 800 additional trains a day all at once was too ambitious
Matthieu Chabanel, CEO of SNCF Réseau
In any case, the failed beginnings of the European Metropolitan Express Network (REME) in Strasbourg, which is a precursor, should serve as a lesson to SNCF Réseau.
“We should have been firmer, explaining that putting 800 additional trains a day all at once was too ambitious
, recognizes Matthieu Chabanel.
But, in July, there should still be 640 more trains.
SNCF Réseau and the Société du Grand Paris (SGP), which Élisabeth Borne wants to associate with the construction of these RERs, have shared the roles: "The SGP will take care of the
new infrastructures and we will take care of the rest"
, explains Matthieu Chabanel , which already has a lot of work elsewhere.
For example, the organization of the opening to competition on the rail, which materialized by the launch in mid-December 2021 of the TGV Trenitalia on the Paris-Lyon in front of the SNCF.
Pending this year the arrival of Renfe on other TGV axes in France.
SNCF Réseau is also working with Railcoop, which wants to launch omnibus trains on the Lyon-Bordeaux line in 2024, and with Le Train, which aims to run TGVs in the Great West in 2025. Similarly, the resumption of TER Marseille- Nice by Transdev on January 1, 2025 inevitably puts the rail infrastructure manager under pressure.