RFF offers to invest heavily in the regeneration

Cursed catenary. Suddenly, these cables have become the main enemies of rail passengers, especially in period of holiday or weekend! Last Saturday, 160 TGV suffered delays because of their failures, and the President of SNCF, Guillaume Pépy, charged with acts of malice rage. A few days earlier, at all saints, these same cables would have been victims of fire the rifle, blocking a TGV Atlantic 50. But during a large pagailles of last summer, the SNCF invoked first the great age of the grid, before calling for a doubling of renovation investments.

The refurbishment of the network, as expected to hire him Green light Réseau Ferré de France (RFF), said the railway company. It is indeed the owner and Manager of the network planning and finance work on the 30,000 kilometres of French channels. And it is to him that should ultimately address the disgruntled passengers! But even warn them that they will get no clear answer... Since RFF does not want to spend twice as much for catenary without checking if the recent incidents are not external events or faults committed by air traffic controllers, rather than the dilapidation of infrastructure. RFF also wonders why, before the summer 2008, the SNCF does had not warned him of the problematic situation of electrical cables, and notes that, apart from recent events, the number of incidents is down eight years... A stone more in the long series baffles between RFF and SNCF for more than ten years.

"We know and you pay".

The SNCF pays to RFF to use channels, complaining of too high rates (approximately EUR 3 billion per year), while RFF reverse to SNCF substantially equivalent amount (2.75 billion) for maintaining the network, while worrying that this money is misused. Jean qui rit and Jean crying. When one increases its profits, the other widening its losses. For 2007, the President of the SNCF was paraded with a net income of almost 1 billion euros and a historically low debt, 4.5 billion, when his alter ego to RFF, Hubert du Mesnil, was low profile with 771 million of losses and a record debt of 27.4 billion! "Since RFF pays the SNCF to maintain the tracks and that SNCF pays RFF to ride his trains, as it grows from one side or the other, it is the benefit in one or the other," summarizes Christian Descheemaeker, President of the Seventh Chamber at the Court of Auditors.

"The question is not whether who loses and who wins, says Hubert du Mesnil, but if the rail system can be enough money to balance its activity, finance its development and catch up with the past." But the answer is clearly no. Our revenues, tolls and public funding (5.5 billion), do not cover the full cost (maintenance and depreciation) of the network, which revolves around EUR 6 billion per year. "In fact, eleven years after the creation of RFF, balance is not glorious. Debt, not be stabilized, has risen some 8 billion. The network, "the largest in Europe", is obsolete and aging, as revealed by an audit in 2005. And, finally, the traffic is declining, the rise of the TGV and the revival of regional trains (TER) masking the decline of conventional lines (trains coral and intercity), and the collapse of the cargo. Increase in debt, aging infrastructure, despite a high maintenance cost, and underutilization of 15 to 20 of the network... This is the result of ten years of conflict between RFF and SNCF, fanned by a State unable to officiate and invest.

A convention of infrastructure management, which deals with work for the period 2007-2010 11 billion, well binding the two companies. But able to play the competition, RFF is inherently suspicious. "Each workpackage is discussed, analyzed, controlled." "Hundreds of railway workers mobilized to make reports to RFF, which calls for studies from 150,000 euros to work when a single kilometre of new catenary cost 200,000," said a senior official of the SNCF, exasperated by the heaviness of the reporting system and the lack of delegation. "SNCF wants that it pay without account, it is impossible, reply Hubert du Mesnil.". This posture, we know and you pay for, is no longer tenable. The SNCF is the only railway company in the world to be his own judge and its own expert. Everywhere, the quality control is part of everyday business.

New performance contract

In fact, the concerns of RFF are not totally devoid of Foundation. An audit of 2005 (report Rivier) report showed that in France, it spends 2 for maintenance (repair work) against 1 euro for the renewal of the equipment, when all the other countries do the reverse. But maintenance has the merit of using lots of SNCF staff, that regeneration requires him to appeal to external companies. In its report, the Court of Auditors refers to "hundreds of millions of euros of possible productivity gains. Not even by modernizing and automating the switch positions, employing more railwaymen 13,000. Or putting an end to this absurd rule according to which SNCF does work on timeslots for one hour and fifty minutes, history will not disrupt the traffic...

The opposition between the SNCF and RFF is in fact listed in their genes. When SNCF engineers dream of ever-greater speed, RFF says "stop", because a train is faster, more it quickly use tracks and catenary. When one speaks of new lines, the other application to the restoration of the existing accounts. However, two years of the opening for competition of the passenger traffic, it is time to bury the old quarrels. And to stop the aging of the network to in lower long-term maintenance, so operating costs. RFF offers to invest heavily in the regeneration. The head of the SNCF infrastructure branch, Pierre Izard share this view. Together, the two enemy brothers have pleaded the case to the Government and succeeded. In the new performance contract signed Monday 3 November with RFF, the State is committed to double investment, setting out a timetable before 2015. Out of the logic of budget annuality and planning work for the first time in the long term, Pierre Izard promised productivity gains, with multi-year contracts with contractors and OEMs, and the progressive generalization of "beaches work" five to six hours. "Which implies to partially substitute for small teams distributed across the network of the mobile teams ranging from one site to another, in other words all the new social balance to find", said.

The battle of the "grooves".

Little by little, under the pressure of RFF, SNCF is evolving. But the truce has its limits. The couple still has beautiful disputes in perspective. Especially because the interest of RFF is to open up the network competition to increase traffic. Therefore its revenues.

But he has faced a major obstacle: the SNCF, by which it must pass for the manufacture of "grooves", i.e. schedules of passage of trains. In a normal regime of competition between operators, the logic would that "schedulers" (14,000 people) go in RFF and do not remain in the dominant carrier.

Parliamentarians, Government, consultants focus on the case, but, indeed, the drama is only beginning. At the SNCF, it dropped to RFF land, but not a single man. A taboo subject. "With RFF, SNCF, Kings of the railway people, had to share their expertise and accept new donors to order, summarizes an expert. Now, they will have to share the jurisdiction of the "schedulers", and a day, for reasons of equality of competition, asked them to accept a transfer of the stations. A real Chinese torture for these engineers, who, as foresters, the sense of working for eternity.

Nevertheless. The Government and even the direction of the SNCF, it recognizes that the creation of RFF was at least the merit "to power SNCF" to him teaching a commercial culture, as evidenced by the recovery of its accounts. As the debt of RFF, person does say Word. The subject is pushed under the carpet, hoping that, by some miracle, with the arrival of new competitors and an increase in traffic, RFF increases its revenues from tolls to the point that the issue resolves itself... to 2045.