SNCF: why the Brétigny trial is also that of the French rail network

The trial of the Brétigny-sur-Orge disaster (Essonne) which opened on Monday April 25 before the Evry criminal court, scheduled to last eight weeks, is also that of the state of the French rail network. Because at the heart of the tragedy that occurred on July 12, 2013, the investigation revealed that it was indeed a defective partnamely a splice, a small metal rod that connects two rails together, which caused the derailment of the train linking Paris to Limoges, killing seven people and injuring dozens.

For nine years, investigations and expertise have multiplied in an attempt to provide explanations to the families of victims, but also within the railway house where this episode still causes so much tension. In effect, the presence of the SNCF on the bench of the accused in a criminal court is experienced as a trauma by the management of the public company, which seeks to show that security is not a subject like any other. “It is true that this disaster was very violent for the company. We are still ‘stricken in the guts’. All the railway workers remember where they were at the time of the tragedy. This trial, for us, is a moment difficult”, admits a company executive.

The Rivier report alert in 2005

However, we cannot say that there was really a “before” and an “after” Bretigny, since awareness of the state of the tricolor network dates back to 2005 and the publication of the Rivier report. It was then an audit carried out by the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne, whose work is authoritative in railway matters. In the conclusions of the report, the late Professor Robert Rivier pointed to “the clearly insufficient resources for the maintenance (upkeep and renewal) of the infrastructure over the past thirty years”.

According to him, France was investing “less in its rail network than Great Britain, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. The serious counterpart of this process is a very significant aging of the traditional network. The average state of the infrastructure is deteriorating and the beginnings of degeneration appear”, pointed out at the time Robert Rivier. The finding was therefore known as early as the 2000s.

Recently, senators Hervé Maurey (Eure, Union centriste) and Stéphane Sautarel (Cantal, Les Républicains) have continued to darken this already gloomy picture. These two specialists in public finance and regional planning published, in March 2022, an important report devoted to the SNCF. In their study, they particularly highlight the work of the teams of the former Réseau ferré de France. “SNCF Réseau is less efficient than its European counterparts. While its productivity has stagnated for twenty years, in France three times as many agents are needed to run a train than elsewhere in Europe. SNCF Réseau must therefore achieve considerable productivity gains”, say the parliamentarians.

To support their demonstration, they resume the work carried out by the Court of Auditors in 2018. In this other report, the Sages estimated “that the maintenance of one kilometer of track occupies 1.73 agents of the French infrastructure manager against 0, 99 agent for his German counterpart”. Also in this document, the Court of Auditors also explained that “network maintenance and renewal expenses increased by 17% between 2013 and 2017. The average cost of renewing one kilometer of lane of the structuring network has increased 20% between 2015 and 2020, while a 6% growth target had been set between 2015 and 2021”. Which then made the authors say that “the costs of upkeep, maintenance and renewal of the network are in France higher than the standards and increasing”. An opinion that the SNCF still does not share.

“When we look at the number of agents per km of network, we are in the middle, according to reports produced by the European Commission”, retorts a manager of the company, who recognizes however that there are “always efforts to do”. Nevertheless, faced with the mountain of work to be carried out (1,700 sites in 2021 alone), SNCF Réseau is turning more and more towards subcontracting, which is straining its accounts and provoking the anger of trade unions. According to an internal source, between 20% and 30% of maintenance operations are thus entrusted to third-party companies.

With 1.5 billion euros, “we are renewing 1000 km of tracks”

Therefore, the sinews of war remains financial. And basically, the finding is shared by the French executive who decided to give back room for maneuver to SNCF Réseau. As part of the 2018 railway reform, which put an end to recruitment for railway status to prepare SNCF for opening up to competition, the State has undertaken to take over 35 billion euros of SNCF’s debt. Network. The latter had in fact swelled by 15 billion euros between 2010 and 2016 alone. This new effort by the French State has been completed since January 1st.

Between the State and its manager, a performance contract (2021-2030) has even just been renegotiated since the previous one (2017-2026) was rendered null and void by the new railway pact. This new version sets an annual financial trajectory at 2.8 billion euros for maintenance and modernization. “In the 2000s, we invested 1 billion euros per year. In 2012, we increased the loans to 2 billion. It’s going in the right direction”, notes a manager of the public company.

The current budget is nevertheless considered insufficient by the federations of travelers, but also by the gendarme of Transport, the ART, which estimates that it will miss “4 billion euros” minimum over the decade to meet the commitments. “However, the delays in renewing and modernizing the network will generate additional costs in the future and risk triggering a spiral of impoverishment”, recently explained ART, forming an echo of the many alerts issued in the years 2000.

In the meantime, to maintain the country’s 28,000 kilometers of rails, the government has granted an envelope of 4.7 billion euros as part of the recovery plan, including 3.8 billion euros for an increase in capital. This aid aims above all to restore the equity of the company where we like to recall that with 1.5 billion euros, “we are renewing 1000 km of tracks”. It’s always taken, but it’s far from Byzantium. This is also why the trial of the Brétigny disaster risks polarizing attention. Because it alone fixes the procrastination between financial needs and the imperative need to rejuvenate our too old French railway. However, everyone agrees that security is priceless.