French senator Nicole Bonnefoy has criticised shippers for dragging their feet on the use of rail freight. She brought forward the idea of making the modal shift from road to rail compulsory when the infrastructure to accommodate such a move exists.
A member of the French Senate committee for regional planning and sustainable development, Bonnefoy represents the Charente département in centre-west France. The area is best known for the cultivation of grapes used to make cognac liquor. More than 165 million bottles of the spirit are exported yearly to almost 150 countries. Road haulage remains the preferred mode of transport in reaching French ports such as Le Havre and Marseille for transshipment to intercontinental markets.
In her introductory remarks, she noted that there was universal agreement on the importance of shifting from road to rail. However, she bemoaned the fact that in her département of Charente, the local rail freight station in Cognac remained unused “because of the inertia of producers, shippers and railway companies”. She added: “This situation is desperate in terms of our decarbonisation objectives. At a time when some cognac producers and merchants are talking about the use of sailing ships in the near future to transport their products, the Cognac-Le Havre rail line, which is in good working order, has been abandoned”.
The infrastructure is there, why not use it?
In April 2023, Bonnefoy wrote to the state prefect of the Nouvelle Aquitaine region, highlighting how rail freight was being neglected by local economic players, despite the new freight station in Cognac being at their disposal. This line is in fact part of a renovation project of the Angoulême-Cognac-Saintes railway line, costing 150 million euros and completed in June last year.
In the letter, Bonnefoy made reference to a statement from 2019 by one of the leading cognac producers, Maison Hennessy. Back then, the company said that “the extra cost generated by rail freight is acceptable” and with the “economy for cognac in excellent health, it had to keep up with the environmental challenges”. Railfreight.com approached trade body, Maisons de Cognac, but no one was immediately available for comment.
What is SNCF Réseau doing?
Bonnefoy was one of the senators who recently quizzed the head of France’s rail network manager, SNCF Réseau, Matthieu Chabanel, on the state of the nation’s rail freight sector. She concluded her quizzing of Chabanel by asking him what he thought about making the shift from road to rail an obligation when the required infrastructure was in place to allow such a move.
He began his reply by underlining that combined transport represented a real challenge for the state authorities. “Having singled out the sites that could accommodate it, I’m convinced that the path to follow should be one of responding to commercial opportunities rather than a vision of creating a network of hubs across the country as has been done in the past and which did not turn out as successful as we’d hoped”. When traffic flows, such as in the case of cognac, exist, corresponding freight operations can be set up, he added.
“We are working with Haropa Port (the public authority which manages the ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris), to identify a number of combined transport hubs. We have created one in Orléans, in response to traffic flows to Le Havre. Haropa Port also hopes to capture flows in western France. SNCF Réseau is ready to support any initiative of this kind but cannot take the place of railway companies or shippers”. Chabanel concluded.