France is currently working on Ulysse Fret, a massive investment plan, totalling over four billion euros up until 2032, to develop rail freight. The industry in the country has now come together and identified 72 measures to finance with these funds. The document was compiled by the French minister of regional planning and decentralisation, the country’s infrastructure manager SNCF Réseau and sector association Alliance 4F.
The report divides the four billion euros envisioned in the Ulysse Fret plan into eight macro-areas of investment, spanning from capillary lines upgrades to digitalisation. This document is not binding, as the authors specified. “The publication of this report is not intended to set in stone investment choices in rail freight”.
This is how the parties proposed to split the money:
- 700 million euros in capillary lines
- 717 million euros in sidings
- 118 million euros in shunting yards
- 200 million euros in spur tracks connecting facilities to the main network
- 982 million euros to increase capacity
- 1,097 billion euros to upgrade and build new terminals
- 530 million euros to adapt the infrastructure to the transport of semi-trailers
- 199 million euros to improve digitalisation
Capillary lines
According to the report, there are 140 lines for a total of 2,000 kilometres in France. These are lines, often reserved for rail freight services but not overly used. The capillary network in France consists of very old lines. Most of them need renovation between the next five or ten years to remain usable. Over the past two years, 99 million euros have been deployed to improve these lines, with 60 more millions coming in 2025.
The document suggests that an additional 474 million euros should be invested in capillary lines in France between 2023 and 2027. Choosing not to invest in these routes could lead to a 16 per cent decrease in rail freight volumes, a loss estimated by the document at 5,5 billion tonnes/kilometre.
Sidings and shunting tracks
Single wagonload traffic makes up less than a quarter of rail freight traffic in France and it is highly dependent on the presence of sidings. Most of the sidings in France are flat, while there are only four so-called ‘gravity shunting’ facilities, which the document claims are particularly suitable for single wagonload operations. In total, the parties suggest that 75 million euros should be invested every year in sidings, a total of 600 million euros for the time horizon set in Ulysse Fret. Otherwise, the document states, “more than half of all rail freight traffic would be altered at best, or stopped at worst, after 10 years”.
For the four gravity shunting locations (Woippy, Sibelin, Miramas and Le Bourget), SNCF has an investment plan of 156 million euros (71 million euros for the installation of more tracks, 41 million euros for the braking systems, 21 million euros for IT protection systems and 23 million euros for “other investments”). According to the document, this initial investment, spread out between 2024 and 2027, should be followed by an additional 30 million euros injection for the 2027-2032 period. For traditional shunting yards, the French state and SNCF Réseau are planning a 48,6-million-euro investment to carry out renovations in 36 locations.
Spur tracks
Spur tracks are rail lines connecting terminals, ports and industrial areas to the main network and represent a major obstacle in France, according to the document, especially for conventional traffic. The main issue is that more than half of these lines in France are currently not used. The report said that only 1,102 out of 2,864 spur tracks are currently operational. “Of the 1,762 unused lines, 13 are new, 392 are in good condition, 710 are in poor condition and 647 are unusable”.
Combined transport terminals
When it comes to combined transport terminals, the document explains that most of them are already reaching their capacity limits. The lack of investment in these terminals over the past 15 years, the report mentioned, caused many terminals to become saturated or too obsolete for the further development of combined transport services.
Out of the almost 1,1 billion euros which the parties think should be invested for terminals, 430 million euros should be used to build new terminals, while 670 millions should go towards the modernisation of existing facilities. “Funding for these operations may come from the public authorities and also from private players”, the report added.
Developing the rail transport of semi-trailers
The measures suggested in the document concerning the development of the transport of semi-trailers on freight trains appear a little less concrete than the ones regarding other aspects. More specifically, the report proposes to identify the transport flows of semi-trailers to define the best solutions. The strategy would entail drafting the semi-trailer map by 2032 and an updated one by 2042.
Digitalisation
When it comes to digitalising the French rail freight sector, one of the main focusses of the document is the information exchange between the French infrastructure manager and operators. The main aspects covered by the report are customer experience as well as capacity and traffic management.