Who is responsible for disruptions (and penalties that may occur) on the Lyon-Grenoble line? The question could deserve to be raised, as the parties involved pass the buck.
The Region, chaired by Laurent Wauquiez, even seems to have made this question its battle horse in recent months. The regional executive has already stepped up to the plate twice, publishing press releases directly targeting its partner, the SNCF.
Already last fall, the division of traffic by two announced by the SNCF was not to the taste of the Region, which had urged the carrier to honor the terms of its contract and to restore a standardized service as quickly as possible. To which the railway company had responded by a combination of factors, to justify its impossibility of temporarily ensuring the resumption of a “normal” service, and this, over a period of a few weeks.
This time, it is at the end of another week, dotted with traffic incidents on the Lyon-Grenoble line, that the Region once again banged its fist on the table. Through a new press release, the executive hardens the tone with the network manager:
“Laurent Wauquiez demands the payment of penalties“, says this document sent to the press, which recalls the value of the stake: “this line, taken every day by many users, had already experienced a period of disruption, last December. Such a situation is not acceptable either for travelers or for the Region.
And to add:Faced with the multiplication of delays and incidents, Laurent Wauquiezpresident of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, is once again asking the SNCF to account. Each delay is today recorded and settled; each delay will result in the payment of penaltiesas specified in the agreement between the Region and the SNCF, signed in 2017″.
A situation not so simple as on paper
However, the situation does not seem as simple as on paper: contacted, the Region did not specify the extent of the delays recorded, as well as the amount of the penalties that could arise. “Our services are in the process of studying and quantifying all the accumulated delays, which could go up more widely than those of the past week”, tells us an internal source. Without however being able to indicate to date what the period covered by this study will be.
For its part, the SNCF, through its entity SNCF Voyageurs which is responsible for passenger flows, responds to having recorded a total of four disruptions in the space of a week, on the line which connects the capital of Gaul to the city iséroise, which is also one of the busiest axes of its network: starting with Monday morning (between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m.), where a “disturbance of installation around Moirans caused some cancellations and train delays”.
Then Wednesday morning, always between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., “a personal accident in Moirans caused some cancellations and train delays“Thursday, it is between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. that a vehicle has “hit a level crossing on the Eyrieux side and caused delays”. Finally, on Friday morning, an installation fault was recorded on the same level crossing at the checkout the day before, and of which “the cause has not yet been identified at this stage and also caused delays”.
And to conclude: “There is no link with maintenance issues, these are one-off incidents”
As for the disruptions recorded at the end of last year, the rail operator assures us that the situation is not comparable to that encountered this week:
“SNCF Voyageurs had committed to a return to normal for the TER Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes transport plan for Lyon – Grenoble. Since the beginning of the year, in accordance with the commitments made, the TER transport offer has greatly improved, with a return to normal rail traffic on the Lyon – Grenoble axis (two traffic per hour), “says SNCF Voyageurs.
“A structural lack of material in the region”
However, the vice-president of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes branch of the National Federation of Transport User Associations (FNAUT), François Lemaire, considers that the penalties announced by Laurent Wauquiez will remain, in fact, not very applicable. And here’s why:
“The Region has entered into an agreement only with the entity SNCF Mobilités (now SNCF Voyageurs, editor’s note), which applies in particular if traffic is impacted by a problem linked to a train breakdown, for example. But no agreement has been signed with SNCF Réseau as other regions have done and as we had requested on several occasions”
An agreement which would therefore de facto exclude the problems of infrastructures falling within the scope of SNCF Réseau, “and which would also not be enforceable in the context of accidents related to external elements such as people or vehicles, which are not the responsibility of the SNCF.. Information that has not, at this stage, been commented on at this stage by the Region.
For the FNAUT, this line, which is one of the busiest axes within the network (with around 28,000 of the 200,000 passengers per day, including TER and coaches) would suffer firstly from a lack of trains:
“The SNCF does not have enough equipment to provide service in this area. We see this every day with the number of trains offered, which is not enough and where people have to board standing up, as well as by trains canceled for lack of replacement solutions. However, it is indeed the Region that is responsible for buying new trains”, he underlines.
When contacted, the Region specified that the annual budget of 800 million euros dedicated to rail is divided into two parts: a first envelope of 570 million euros for the agreement between the Region and SNCF Voyageurs and concerning operating expenses, as well as a second envelope of 230 million euros euros on the investment component, including equipment and infrastructure, railways and stations in particular.
The fact remains that as early as 2017, a contribution from the CGT union representative Antoine Fatiga had alerted to the fact that the decrease in the regional budget linked to the TER 2017-2022 agreement, would lead to a “unrealizable agreement” :
“The financial equation is clear: 549 million euros in 2014 in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, 560 million in 2016 and 510 million in 2017. It is therefore 49 million euros that will be missing in 2017, to which must be added the mechanical augmentations to the convention, which are no longer integrated. There will therefore be a cumulative shortfall of 70 million euros in 2017 and more than 150 million in 2022 to keep the objective of high quality of service at the forefront of the Region’s priorities.he claimed, in a collection of avis published on November 28, 2017 by the Ceser Auvergne Rhône-Alpes, concerning the Region-SNCF 2017-2022.
The RER and railway node file invites itself into the debates
More broadly, François Lemaire regrets a “lack of political will“at the local level to deploy major projects such as that of a Lyon-style RER, which aimed to increase the frequency of services and absorb an increase in annual ridership.
By 2035, initial assessments indeed evoked an expected increase in attendance of 25% for TER regional trains and 15% for Lyon Part-Dieu station alone, including, among other things, the traffic that could be generated by a Lyon RER project.
“We must not forget that the Lyon-Grenoble line already provides several functions: that of a TER and TGV service between the cities of Lyon, Grenoble and Chambéry, but also that of a peri-urban service for neighboring cities of the metropolis. Lyonnaise, which continue to develop like Bourgoin Jallieu, the Tour du Pin, etc”, recalls the vice-president of FNAUT AURA.
A file itself connected to two other regional railway issues, broader: the question of French accesses of the Lyon-Turin, which would allow according to the FNAUT “improve service between the Lyon, Grenoble and Savoy conurbations” but whose financing by the State is still not recorded, but also that of the Lyon railway star, a bottleneck where 15 European railway lines converge, 36 million passengers per year, 66 stations, 722 kilometers of railway tracks… and responsible for a poor rate of regularity of trains (82% in 2015, 10 points less than the national average).
The Lyon railway star has nevertheless already been the subject of a first major investment plan, sequenced in 32 operations between 2015 and 2025, for a total budget of 310 million euros (supplied by the State, the Region , the EU, SNCF Réseau, Lyon Metropolis and CNR).
And it is now the next step, namely a new investment plan which aims to meet the challenges of the next 20 years, and in particular to respond to the reception of new trains, which is still under discussion. between communities and stakeholders.
“A public debate was held in 2019, and there was consensus to work on the railway junction, which is now saturated, as well as on the Lyon-style RER project: but today, this last subject is not moving forward, while other cities such as Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Strasbourg have all implemented their metropolitan RER project”, underlines François Lemaire.
A highly politicized file, where here again, interests diverge: at the start of the week, the EELV president of the Métropole de Lyon also sent a new letter, urging the president LR Laurent Wauquiez to get back around the table to move forward on a judged question “priority” from the RER to Lyon. The response of the Region could also intervene shortly, we slip behind the scenes, while, contacted by La Tribune also, SNCF Réseau returns the ball to its sponsor.
(updated on 03/30 at 21:35)
