Fixing France's Transit: the plan

In the past five articles, we’ve talked extensively about the flaws of French Regional Transit. It is also clear that these flaws will persist unless radical changes are made. So what is the plan?

Setting the stage for change

To set ourselves up for success, there are a few things we need to be sure of. Firstly, we need to ensure that financial responsibility for maintaining the network is clearly allocated, and that the entity responsible for paying for works

We need a governance structure taking into account existing actors, mechanisms to ensure proper funding of regional transit systems, measures to prevent further declassification or sale of infrastructure so as to preserve it for future use, measures to encourage increased use of infrastructure and interconnectivity, and the development of what I call “transport plans”.

Fixing SNCF Réseau

• We urgently need to address SNCF Réseau’s spiraling debt

Transport Syndicates à-la-Verkehrsverbund

Verkehrsverbund is a German word describing an association that groups a variety of transport operators, in order to create a single fare system and synchronize connections between different means of transport.

But I believe we can also go a step further to this: one of the key issues with managing a rail network is ensuring that it is a victim of the changing winds of politics. In my view, the Transport Syndicates developed for French regional networks should act as a catalyst for the network, proposing a yearly maintenance budget, as well as proposed upgrades to politicians.

The reason for this is that transit needs a coherent plan that goes beyond one political mandate, and the inherently confrontational nature of French politics makes this difficult.

The Verkehrsverbund should be constituted of a limited number of politicians or civil servants from the regional, departmental and local levels, representatives from infrastructure managers, operators, and passenger

Proper funding

Measures to prevent further degradation

The Transport Plan

The Transport Plan

Rethinking Fares

Rethinking Services

Quick Fixes

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Photo by Ruben Christen on Unsplash

This Article is the fifth of a series on fixing France’s regional trains. You can find out more in the introductory article, here.