Réseau Ferré National (France)

From February 13, 1997, to December 31, 2014, the national rail network belonged to the EPIC Réseau ferré de France (RFF), with maintenance and operation delegated to SNCF.

France has developed its high-speed network but has abandoned many small lines and stations, making access to certain services more difficult in rural areas.

[1] These short lines are considered unprofitable, due to their high cost for low ridership, as well as their environmental impact when not electrified.

[2] The very first French railroad line, and also the first in continental Europe, was the Saint-Étienne–Andrézieux railway, granted by order of King Louis XVIII to Louis-Antoine Beaunier in 1823 and opened on June 30, 1827.

As a result, its rail network was operated by the Kaiserliche Generaldirektion der Eisenbahnen in Elsaß-Lothringen (Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine - EL).

Added to this was the voie ferrée d'intérêt local, with a maximum extension in 1928 of 20,921 km of lines, operated directly by the general councils or by various private companies on behalf of the départements.

[7] At the time of its creation, the SNCF was a semi-public company, operating a network of 42,500 km of track (8% of which was electrified) and organized around five regions: East, North, West, South-East and South-West.

The creation of the SNCF was accompanied by the strengthening of the rail-road coordination policy initiated in 1934, which led to a major program of line closures.

Passenger and freight closures continued from the 1950s onwards, reaching a total of over 17,000 km of lines closed to all traffic in 2011.

[8] After the second German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, the Deutsche Reichsbahn managed the Alsace-Moselle and Guillaume-Luxembourg rail networks during World War II, from July 1, 1940, until the Liberation (from September 1944).

The aim was to separate two distinct activities: railway infrastructure management on the one hand, and the organization of transport services on the other.

Ownership of the "public railway domain" was transferred for the most part to Réseau ferré de France when it was created in 1997: 30,000 kilometers of lines in service and 108,000 hectares spread over more than 10,000 communes.

The SNCF, for its part, retained ownership of the "industrial tracks" (equipment maintenance workshops, depots, goods halls, etc.)

Certain areas, proportionally very limited but quantitatively not insignificant, remained disputed for a long time before the French government imposed external arbitration between 2005 and 2006.

Between February 13, 1997, and December 31, 2014, Réseau ferré de France owned and managed the national rail network, with Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF) as delegated manager (as defined by Decree 2002–1359), which in practice consists of all rail infrastructure: tracks, platforms, signal boxes; the passenger buildings in stations, as well as several hundred service tracks for parking rolling stock, are still owned by SNCF.

The 2015 law on the new territorial organization of the Republic (NOTRe) gives regions and inter-municipalities the opportunity to become owners of capillary freight lines on the national rail network.

At the inauguration of the LGV Bretagne-Pays de la Loire, President Emmanuel Macron declared: "the promise I want us to keep together for the years to come is this: (...) not to relaunch major new projects, but to commit to financing infrastructure renewal".

[17] The French State is the owner and SNCF Réseau the operator of rail lines and infrastructure in France, with the exception of: According to Danielle Brulebois, LREM MP and member of the board of the Établissement public de sécurité ferroviaire, the French rail network is suffering from "30 to 40 years of underinvestment".

The highest point on the SNCF-owned network is the Bolquère-Eyne station in the Pyrénées-Orientales region, at an altitude of 1,593 m: it is served by TER Occitanie trains on the Cerdagne line.

As these three departments were annexed by Germany in 1871, the standards in force on the German rail network were maintained after Alsace-Moselle was returned to France in November 1918.

Finally, some capillary freight lines are operated under a single track with a restricted traffic (VUTR) system.

Some lines carry an official number, but are no longer part of the national rail network; they may have been decommissioned, but are still operated for tourist traffic, or transferred to third parties (local authorities, chambers of commerce and industry, autonomous ports).

This is notably the case for the following lines: According to the classification of the International Union of Railways (UIC, French: Union internationale des chemins de fer), the lines of the national network are divided into nine categories,[25] according to the importance of traffic.

It should not be forgotten, however, that RFF inherited a large part of SNCF's debt, which had a significant impact on its financing capacity.

97-135 of February 13, 1997, on the creation of the public establishment Réseau ferré de France with a view to the renewal of rail transport,[29] specifies that "the consistency and main characteristics of this network are set by the State, under the conditions laid down in article 14 of law no.

97-445 of May 5, 1997,[30][31] concerning the initial assets of the public establishment Réseau ferré de France, specifies that "the assets transferred in full ownership to Réseau ferré de France, hereinafter referred to as RFF, in accordance with article 5 of the aforementioned law of February 13th, 1997, are divided into four categories, which are listed in the appendix to this decree".

Article L.2111-1 of the French Transport Code states: "The composition and main characteristics of the national rail network are laid down by regulation (...).

Several ministerial decrees have been issued in succession to define the basic sections of the national rail network and the list of stations for which station-stop reservation fees are payable, most recently on December 4, 2006.

The line may be closed and the track kept in place, either for national defense purposes, or to make it available to a third party (cyclo-draisine, tourist railway, community), or at the request of the Minister for subsequent use.

A line is cut off (in whole or in part) when the Board of Directors of Réseau ferré de France has decided to do so.