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  Report 2006

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Les sociétés

Under the chairmanship of Dominique Bussereau, the Secretary of State for Transport, and in the presence of SNCF Chairwoman Anne-Marie Idrac, RFF Chairman Hubert du Mesnil, Fret SNCF Managing Director Olivier Marembaud, and Bernard Sargis, Chairman of PROFFER Centre (an association for the promotion of rail freight), signed a protocol agreement in Orléans on 26 September.

PROFFER groups together Centre Region charterers and financial partners CAISSE DES DEPOTS ET CONSIGNATION, SOFIPROTEOL, UNIGRAINS, and ONIGC.

The purpose of the agreement is to manage the preparatory work leading to the creation of “PROXIRAIL”.

“PROXIRAIL”, to be created on the initiative of the charterers and under their responsibility, could thus become France’s leading local rail operator. Taking inspiration from experiments being carried out in other European countries like Germany and Sweden, the project is based on the conclusions of the “Rail freight transport and territorial development” report commissioned by the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure from Jacques Chauvineau, remitted in 2006. This aims at developing and perpetuating rail activity through the massification of regional logistics flows, while ensuring the economic balance of the traffic produced. The Centre region would make it the first pilot experiment.

The aim of creating PROXIRAIL will be to federate manufacturers that are proactive in rail freight and wish to build up innovative solutions. It comes as a natural complement to Fret SNCF’s long distance massified services making up part of its High-rate Rail Flow approach, and responds to territorial authorities’ concern for the region to develop its rail network connections within and outside France. Traffic could initially start operating as from 2008, with further traffic gradually being deployed from then on. The potential represents millions of metric tons for the Centre Region.

The objective of stimulating traffic on the capillary rail network in order to attract goods flows towards points of exchange for long-distance forwarding, brought to light the vital need to regenerate the infrastructure. To this end, the Centre Region and the State embarked on renovation of the railway network to the tune of €30 million, as part of the State/Region Projects Contract and the European programme. Since then, a recent audit commissioned by PROFFER has estimated that between €75 and 150 million will be needed to regenerate the freight-dedicated network.

The constitution of this first local rail transport operator should mean that the boost to rail freight sought by all sides will also considerably increase the competitiveness of Centre Region companies.