Jean Castex was appointed president and CEO of public railway group SNCF on Wednesday, the company announced following a meeting of the board of directors and an appointment decree adopted by the Council of Ministers on the same day. The former prime minister and former director general of the RATP expressed, in a statement, his “pride and determination” to join this “great public company whose missions are at the heart of citizens’ daily lives.”
Relaunch of night trains, development of the TGV, modernization of the network… Jean Castex, who presents himself as a user who loves trains, obtained the green light from Parliament last Wednesday to take the reins of the SNCF, where he will have to solve a delicate financial and technical equation. His candidacy received a total of 60 favorable votes from 83 electors in the Sustainable Development commissions of the two assemblies (34 in the National Assembly and 26 in the Senate, 5 votes against in the Assembly and 2 in the Senate, as well as 10 abstentions in the Assembly and 6 in the Senate).
“More trains and better trains”
Chosen at the end of September by Emmanuel Macron to succeed the railway worker Jean-Pierre Farandou, since then appointed member of the government, Jean Castex stressed before deputies a few days ago the enormous need for investments to maintain and develop the aging railway network, shaken by the arrival of competition and the consequences of global warming. “The challenges are numerous: there is the famous investment wall to modernize the network, the mountain of opening to competition and the shock of the ecological transition,” he summarized, also referring to the “capacity shock.”
Without detailing his roadmap, Jean Castex rejected some slogans: “more trains and better trains”, “attract more people on trains”, “win the infrastructure battle to modernize the network”.
A method based on “dialogue, listening”
Faced with the arrival of competition on high-speed lines in the south of France, in particular with the Italian company Trenitalia or the French private projects in development, which led the subsidiary SNCF Voyageurs to launch a profound internal reorganization, the former prime minister insisted on the need to “form a group” in the face of the fragmentation and loss of identity that the SNCF group is experiencing in its reorganizations. “It’s going to motivate me a lot,” he said.
Regarding the need for investments to improve the network and signaling, the State will have to put its hand in its pocket while awaiting the arrival, after 2032, of a contribution from the highway sector. But “these are not useless expenses,” he promised, because “if we do nothing,” disruptions will “increase” and the network “will deteriorate.”
To solve the difficult financial equation, Jean Castex relies on his method based on “dialogue, listening”, with “the railway community, the territories”, the government and the users, whose role he intends to “increase”.
Improve the circulation of night trains
A lover of trains, the former prime minister had already presented his candidacy to lead the SNCF in 2019. Jean Farandou was then preferred, who joined Lecornu’s government as Minister of Labor. As before the Senate a few days before, Jean Castex repeated to the deputies his interest in night trains, of which he wants to “improve their management and attractiveness as much as possible”, despite the problems they encounter. He stressed that he was going to “fight for freight.”
In addition to the announced closure of the Paris-Berlin night train, which will be one of his “first issues”, Jean Castex also indicated that one of his first trips would probably be dedicated to the Paris-Clermont-Ferrand line, which has suffered risks, cancellations and delays due to a chronic lack of investment for years.
Source: BFM TV
