TRANSPORT minister Philippe Tarabot has presented the French cabinet with the text of a new transport bill that will provide infrastructure manager SNCF Network with an additional €1.5bn a year for infrastructure renewals and upgrades.
The proposed law is based on the findings of Ambition France Transports, a series of policy conferences held between May and July 2025 that brought together politicians, the transport sector and customer representatives to consider how best to meet the challenges posed by France’s aging transport networks and the need to decarbonise them.
One unanimous conclusion was the need to guarantee investment over the long term, and the bill sets out a new financing model aimed at making good previous underspending on maintenance. From 2032 €2.5bn of revenue from motorway concessions will be allocated to investing in all transport networks, providing sustainable funding.
More immediately, an additional €1.5bn a year will be provided from 2028 for renewals and upgrades on the rail network, drawn from a combination of sources. These include reinvesting profits made by French National Railways (SNCF), European Union (EU) funding, and private finance. Changes to the legal framework will enable “innovative” private financing mechanisms to be used for a limited number of SNCF Network upgrade projects.
A total of €4.5bn a year will be provided for renewals and upgrades, written into the performance contract between the government and SNCF Network for 2024 to 2033. Across the transport sector, infrastructure investment programmes will be set out in law for a period of at least 10 years.
The bill also provides support for the development of Regional Metropolitan Express Service (Serm) networks, which through infrastructure enhancements and other investment are intended to provide more frequent regional rail services. With the government providing €37m for initial studies, 27 Serm projects are now being developed in France.
Under the proposed legislation, the legal framework applying to the state-owned Société des Grands Projets (SGP) will be simplified in order to enable it to participate in Serm projects at the request of the local authorities that are developing them.
Formerly Société du Grand Paris, SGP’s domain has until recently been limited to the Île-de-France region, where it continues to be responsible for delivering the Grand Paris Express automated metro project. Changes to legislation would enable it to act as project manager for Serm infrastructure projects on behalf of local authorities.
“Faced with aging infrastructure and the need to maintain and decarbonise it, the draft framework law on transport proposes a real revolution in terms of financing,” Tarabot says.
“From now on, transport will also benefit from an investment scheduling law, which is essential for long-term investment and thus reducing delays and postponing projects.”
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