July 2014
abstract
Responsabilité & Environnement
Transports terrestres et développement économique
Issue editor:
Michel MASSONI et Hervé de TREGLODE
Issue 75
1 - Strategic aspects
How to better integrate French transportation in European networks?
By Matthias RUETE
Directeur général de la Direction générale des Affaires intérieures (DG HOME), Commission européenne (ancien Directeur général de la Mobilité et des Transports)
France has always lain at the center of questions related to a trans-European infrastructure for transportation. Owing to its geographical position, economic weight and the quality of its own infrastructure, France is a major player in European transportation. However, investments in this infrastructure in France have decreased and, furthermore, are concentrated on the necessary development of urban transit. These factors delay the amount invested in constructing big European axes, in particular for hooking the French transportation system up with neighboring countries. In the long run, this situation can hamper Europe’s geographical unity and hinder the competitiveness of firms in France and Europe. France must profit from the window of opportunity opened through the new European program for planning and funding trans-European infrastructures so as to stimulate its investments and thus boost growth.
Transportation infrastructures in France tomorrow: The conclusions of Commission Mobilité 21
By Philippe DURON
Ancien Président de la Commission Mobilité 21
A year ago, Commission Mobilité 21 submitted to the French government its recommendations about implementing a National Scheme of Infrastructures for Transportation (SNIT). Comments on these recommendations have too often been restricted to the politically sensitive chapter that ranked the SNIT’s 75 projects. Adopting a broad approach, the commission intended, however, to establish an appraisal of the current state, operations and connections of transportation systems in France and to make proposals for building a system of “sustainable mobility”. Among the topics discussed in this review of the commission’s alternative approach are: the place of high-speed trains in the rail system; the role of road transportation in an “intermodal” system; the seaports to develop so as to increase our country’s competitive edge; the “energy transition”; the integration of French transportation in a European network; and methods for dealing with inequality between localities.
Rail competition, a national inhibition!
By Gilles SAVARY
Député de la Gironde
France is creeping toward a reform of its rail system a few months before the last phase in the construction of single European rail area, as already happened for road or air transportation during the 1990s. The stated EU objective — shared by French representatives in Brussels but still repressed in the discourse of officials in Paris — is to abolish the last national borders that deter the work patiently carried out in view of creating a single rail area. EU rail policy does not just amount to a program for deregulating monopolies and regulating competition; it is also a powerful, deliberate tool for investment in transportation.
Conservation of the environment: An important dimension in plans for the LGV South Europe Atlantic (SEA)
By Christophe HUAU
Directeur de projet SEA à Réseau Ferré de France (RFF)
Thierry CHARLEMAGNE
Directeur de l'Environnement de la société concessionnaire LISEA
and Philippe RAVACHE
Directeur technique à la direction des Projets du COSEA, le groupement concepteur-constructeur de la LGV SEA
The high-speed rail LGV-SEA, 300 kilometers long, will hook Tours up with Bordeaux in 2017. From preliminary studies onwards, this project has been conducted so as to reduce its environmental impact and take into account the commitments made by the government and Réseau Ferré de France (RFF). At the construction site, the concessionaire is applying measures for protecting biodiversity, preserving the way of life of inhabitants and seeing to it that the new rail line is integrated in the landscape in the areas crossed.
Land transportation’s accessibility and economic development: It’s time to change times!
By Yves CROZET
Professeur, Université de Lyon (IEP), Laboratoire d’Économie des Transports
Faced with weak economic growth during the past five years, several European countries are calling for more investment in infrastructures for transportation. Many of these projects have run afoul of financial or socioeconomic assessments of feasibility. The return on investment is low, sometimes negative, even when taking into account nonmonetary benefits such as saved transit time or positive effects on the environment. To skirt around this difficulty, new methods of project assessment have been invented in Great Britain and France. Using different approaches to assign an economic value to the “gains in accessibility” due to new infrastructures and new services in transportation, they establish a direct relation between improved accessibility and increases in the GDP. Can we trust them? In general, gains in accessibility cannot be turned into gains in economic growth, unless we adopt very controversial, simplistic hypotheses. Rather than fixating on the growth supposedly resulting from the saved transit time (as in plans for certain high-speed trains), we should investigate another aspect of accessibility, namely: reliability and capacity.
2 - How will transportation services change?
What expectations do passengers have in France?
By Daniel BURSAUX
Directeur général, direction générale des Infrastructures, des Transports et de la Mer, ministère de l’Écologie, du Développement durable et de l’Énergie
During the decade starting in 2000, the French significantly changed their behavior in relation to transportation. The number of rides per day per person, which had considerably increased till the mid-1990s, now tends to be stable. Although “unnecessary” reasons still account for the majority of trips, rides for “necessary” reasons — typically from home to work or school, and vice-versa — are becoming longer everywhere around the country. This is a major factor behind the increase in the distance traveled daily. Although the use of cars has slackened in urban areas, population growth in the exurbs has augmented automobile traffic at the national level. Meanwhile, public transit, thanks to the tramway revival, is carrying more passengers, especially in agglomerations with good transit systems that respond to passengers’ ever stronger demands for quality services. Bicycles have reappeared on city streets; and new behavior patterns, such as car-sharing or -pooling, hold promise for the future. Public authorities are backing these trends.
What cities and forms of mobility for stimulating productivity?
By Jean-Pierre ORFEUIL
Professeur émérite, Université Paris Est et Institut pour la ville en mouvement, Paris
“Usual” trips made in a car account for three-quarters of traffic and CO2 emissions. Public transit, though frequently proposed as a means for reducing this impact, has limitations: for users, the time spent in transportation is often less than attractive and, for public authorities, the ever increasing costs of funding transit systems. For these reasons, the proposal is made to evaluate the feasibility of an option based on “urban-designed” private vehicles (having one or two seats, weighing less than 300 kg and running on electricity at a speed limited to 50-70 km/hr. It meets city-dwellers’ expectations, improves urban life and leaves a much smaller carbon footprint. Backing this form of transport calls for coordination in public policy at various scales and in different sectors.
Commitments for public transportation and sustainable mobility: GART’s manifesto
By Roland RIES
Groupement des Autorités responsables de Transport (GART)
In a context where transportation depends for more than 80% on private vehicles, developing sustainable policies is indispensable for enabling France to keep its commitments about drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. For GART (Group of Authorities Responsible for Transport), the time for comparing alternative transports is over; it is now time to pass to “intermodality” and its corollary, the need to redesign zoning maps based on an integrated management of urban planning and transportation policies. This implies enhancing the attractiveness of public transit systems, a dynamic sector that creates local jobs, which cannot be moved off shore. It also entails resetting rates and fees so as to obtain financial leverage for reaching another goal, namely: guarantee the right of access to transportation to everyone, in particular the disabled.
What prospects for high-speed trains in France?
By Jean SIVARDIÈRE
Président de la Fédération nationale des Associations d’Usagers des Transports (FNAUT)
Nowadays in France, the politically correct accuse high-speed trains (TGVs) of ruining the rail system and predict their decline. When we listen to ministers, economists and environmentalists, we imagine that the salvation of rail services entails abandoning the policy of everything-for-the-TGV (which has existed for but ten years now). Nonetheless, this abandonment would not result in the indispensable reduction in the operating costs of TGVs; nor would it significantly alter funding for “classical” rail services. In fact, the major beneficiary would, as we can already observe, be road transportation! High-speed trains can be economically relevant under the following conditions: the decisions made about future lines must be rational instead of stemming from the fancies of politicians in dire need of big ideas; the conditions of competition between trains, on the one hand, and, on the other, airplanes and cars must be clarified by means of environmental taxes; and the TGV must pay more attention to passengers’ needs.
Following freight in urban areas: A new pact between statistical surveys and simulation
By Florence TOILIER & Alain BONNAFOUS & Jean-Louis ROUTHIER
Laboratoire d’Économie des Transports
Compared with what we know about passenger services in cities, including simulations of ridership as a function of hypotheses related to transportation policies, little is known about shipping freight in urban areas. We have long assumed that these “utilitarian” forms of transportation have an effect on traffic congestion of about the same magnitude as private vehicles. Twenty years ago, the French Ministry of Equipment launched a national research program for improving statistics and our understanding of urban logistics. Advances in knowledge about urban freight and shipping are presented herein, in particular the implementation of novel statistical surveys in this field.
The stakes: Everday mobility in large urban areas
By André BROTO
Vinci Autoroutes
The potential of buses and “shared” forms of road transport is illustrated by focusing on two aspects. First of all, for the thirty million people living in suburbs and exurbs, cars tally 80% of the distance traveled, even though the demand for transportation there is so dense that public transit should be feasible. For economic, social and environmental reasons, the second focus is on home-work-home trips. The stakes are considerable for families whose “transportation” budget is much higher than for downtown households. They are also considerable in relation to CO2 emissions, since these trips account for about a quarter of all automobile emissions. Comparable to the difference between a high-speed and an ordinary train, the intercity bus on a freeway has advantages over the ordinary city bus — fewer stops and faster service, factors that could set off a virtuous circle by improving service and reducing fixed costs.
A storm warning for rail freight in France
By Denis CHOUMERT
Président de l’Association des Utilisateurs de Transports de Fret (AUTF)
and Christian ROSE
Délégué général de l’AUTF
It has long been popular to blame the woes of shipping freight by rail on insolent competition from truckers. This simplistic, erroneous finger-pointing has inevitably come up with inapplicable solutions. The latter fail to directly address the real, structural problems of operating conditions and the cost of shipping freight by train. The reform of the French rail system now under way, by opening the door to competition in rail passenger services, might wreak collateral damage on rail freight services.
Are French ports less attractive owing to the lack of rail freight services? Or does this lack result from ports being less attractive?
By François SOULET de BRUGIÈRE
Président du Conseil de surveillance du Grand Port Maritime de Dunkerque, Président délégué de l’Union des Ports de France et membre du Conseil supérieur de la Marine marchande. Directeur de la Valorisation de la Recherche du groupe Sup de Co de la Rochelle
Faced with costs rising faster than for other forms of transport, shipping freight by rail in France has continuously seen its share of the market decrease. Nevertheless, some pundits predict a rosy future, arguing that rail freight has to its advantage bulk shipments and a weaker carbon footprint. Meanwhile, the ports are actively pursuing a strategy for increasing their share of the freight market. To serve their hinterland, they have to count on a long-haul rail system that is not just “reactive” but also (and above all) reliable. The future of French ports and of rail freight will be closely related in the coming decades.