How to guarantee the financing of transport infrastructure and mobility until 2040 without further eating state finances? The Government launches a great reflection on the issue on Monday with Monday with the visitor the mana of the highway concessions.
The needs are colossal, on the one hand, to finance the public transport called to develop massively to decarbonize trips, but also to maintain infrastructure (roads, railways, bridges, stations, etc.), whose degradation accelerates with climate change. According to a report published in 2023 by senators Hervé Maurey (Centrista Group) and Stéphane Sautael (LR), the trips of the French and the transport of goods will require around 2030 billion euros, combined operations and investments.
“If we want to make the ecological transition in France, we must make more load trains, more public transport, more electrical trucks, more river roads,” he lists Dominique Bussereau, a former secretary of state for transport between 2002 and 2004 and after 2007 to 2010.
Highway future
Ambition France Transports, whose work will be inaugurated on Monday in Marseille by Prime Minister François Bayrou, will be organized in the form of four workshops, each that meets between 10 and 15 participants (elected officials, professionals, economists).
One will be related to the financing of daily transport and, in particular, the SERM (Metropolitan Regional Express Services, the famous Metropolitan Rres announced in 2023). A workshop will refer to the mobility of the road and, in particular, the future of highway concessions that mature between 2031 and 2036, another railroad and a last freight.
The objective is to “rest the basis of a sustainable, robust and sustainable financing system,” according to a government source, while the gap continues to expand between the infrastructure projects announced, the necessary maintenance of roads and railways and “the resources that are currently mobilizable.”
The average age of the French rail network reached almost 29 years where, in Germany, it is 17 years, and in Switzerland, a global reference in this area, 15 years. The conference must reach its conclusions at the end of July, according to the Government. A large part of the debates should change the future of highway concessions.
Ecotax
These, exploited in their vast majority by three large groups (Vinci, Eiffage and the Spanish Abertis) due to the expression between 2031 and 2036. Should we maintain the concession model? Go to direct management? Finance your toll or tax maintenance? And above all, should we put the way to contribute to finance the rail? No track will be ruled out, ensure the organizers of the conference.
“If there is an idea that I will express expressly, it is that the resources identified by the roads must be clear to the transport sector,” said Transportation Minister Philippe Tabarot in Figaro.
Concession companies generate around 13 billion euros in billing per year. To defend their model, they claim to assume many investments, starting with the installation of electrical terminals, the number of those that in the highway areas must be multiplied by ten in 2035 to meet the demand, according to one of them. Another question that runs the risk of stretching the discussions: the possible return of the heavyweight ecotax, a measure that had aroused a fuss in 2013 before being abandoned.
If it had been maintained, “we would have six billion more per year, so we would not need to make a conference,” said Dominique Busserau. The Public and Railway Transport Union (UTPF) will also defend this measure, said Florence Sautejeau, general delegate of this organization that brings together public transport companies.
Source: BFM TV
