On the development of the railway, Beaune admits that “it would be dishonest” to say that everything can be done

The Deputy Minister for Transport, Clément Beaune, considers it a “budgetary priority” to increase the means allocated to the rail network, but “it would be dishonest to say” that we can do everything, he declared in an interview with the Sunday newspaper.

“But our network has been neglected for the last thirty years. Extending the effort made in the last five years is my budgetary priority”, said the minister. The staff currently dedicated to maintaining the network is insufficient, he acknowledges.

“One of my priorities, since the beginning of the school year, is to think with SNCF Réseau about possible solutions or additional means”, he assures, while the executive director of SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, proposes a plan valued at 100 billion euros to be able to double the railway’s share of passenger and freight transport in France.

Make a list of priorities

“It would be dishonest to say that we can do high speed, regeneration, support for small lines at the same time, without sequencing or prioritizing”, however, clarifies Clément Beaune.

The TGV is for him “not exceeded”. “We can use innovative financing solutions for new projects by bringing all partners around the table, State, communities, Europe, project companies, and mobilizing local fiscal resources”, he recalls, while former Prime Minister Jean Castex recently relaunched projects important as Bordeaux-Toulouse.

“Improve daily transportation”

But “everyday transport, often metropolitan, like the Transilien in the Parisian region, remains our priority because improving it has a direct impact on people’s lives,” he adds. “My goal is clear: to improve daily transport and accelerate the ecological transition.”

Clément Beaune also considers that the summer is “exceptional”, both with the strong return of the public to the trains after the health crisis and with the high temperatures.

Despite “the fragilities in the network (and) the slowdowns in traffic”, “the public rail service has faced this situation of accelerated recovery”, he believes, insisting on a necessary improvement in passenger information in the event of a problem .