Transport Information Group

Everybody knows summer is a “slow” period. Thus we have not been writing a lot in the last couple weeks on Transport Expertise, but we did quite a bit of thinking to improve the services we provide, and to choose what we will write about in the future.

After six month of successful activity, we needed to figure out where to go and why. Also, some organizational questions have been raised, and we needed time to work on certain things like “How to market our work and the website?”, “How to promote the documents we produce?”, “What do the readers want to read about?”, etc.

To answer the last questions, we analyzed the site statistics and decided that we will mainly concentrate on five particular topics that have been interesting most of Transport Expertise visitors, since the website’s opening:

• High Speed Rail;
• Public Transport: infrastructure, rolling stock, operation;
• PPP / Toll Roads / Infrastructures investments;
• Green Logistics / Green Supply Chain; and
• Freight Rail and Waterways.

Also, in order to better integrate all the services we provide, we chose that we will publish directly the Transport Information Group Newsletter from a “transport-expertise.org” email address. The Google Group that we have been using until now will be abandoned. Working on the new tools will however take time, and we hope the new delivery system to be ready by September 2008. We will thus be able to send other materials such as new study released to our subscribers.

Activity will resume at full rhythm in the next couple days; our goal now is to publish two daily articles, one in French at 2:00 PM Paris time (6:00 AM EST), and one in English published at 12:00 PM EST/9:00 AM PST.

We are still working on two studies that will be released soon (delayed because of the previous reasons):

• French Offer in Urban Mobility;
• High Speed Rail in France.

We hope to see you on Transport Expertise in the next couple weeks/months. We thank you for your support, and wait for your feedback and comments.

Matthieu Desiderio, Transport Expertise Editor

There is a way to finance infrastructure when the National Government does not have enough money… simply rely on the Local and Regional Governments!

A future high-speed rail line extension is planned from Paris toward the west side of France, also known as Brittany, Bretagne in French. As of today, on a regular map of France, Brest, in Brittany, is around 600 kilometres or at least 6 hours driving or 4 to 5 hours by train from Paris. The new high-speed rail link would totally change our country’s map, as it did for the rest of France: Brest would then be at 3 hours from Paris by TGV (see below for project references) and not anymore “that far away”, as represented on the map hereunder. Note that this map was build taking into account the travel time from Paris to the different cities by TGV (French high-speed train operated by SNCF).

Modified map of France depending on TGV time travel from Paris

Source: La Tribune

Financing the project

First things first… Before seeing Brest at a reasonable distance from Paris on the previous map, it is needed to find enough budget to finance the project. After several months and multiple discussions between all Brittany’s local Government officials, they decided unanimously that they would be part of the financing team for this project, bringing €1.1 billion into the Bretagne Grande Vitesse (BGV) project (High-Speed Brittany). (more…)

Paris launch a waterways transit service

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë and Jean-Paul Huchon, President of Paris-Ile de France regional Government innaugurated the new waterways transit service Voguéo on Saturday, June 28, 2008.

Operated by RATP, this new service will link Maisons-Alfort in the Val-de-Marne Département to Austerlitz train station inside Paris city (for more details, please see the map attached).

Voguéo Route

Source: MétroPole, RATP. (more…)

Reading Les Echos today makes me rise this question… The French Government implemented a system of tax/subsidy (bonus-malus écologique aka écopastille), that is applied to new cars’ buyers: the system is quite simple, if people buy a car that has a low gas consumption and thus low emissions, the buyer gets a refund/subsidy and if they buy a gas guzzler, they have to pay a tax over the car price (see the chart below for more details).

However it seems like this measure implemented by the new Government early 2008, following the decisions taken during the Environmental Roundtable, may cost around €200 million to the French State in 2008. The reason is that more people are buying more smaller cars than large ones or SUVs, since petrol prices are going up and the tax does not match the subsidies distributed. The Government initially anticipated the system to be self-funded… For the first five months in 2008, small-low-polluting cars sales increased 15% whereas large-engine-gas-guzzzling ones fell 27%, according to the French Carmakers Committee.

Amount of environmental tax/subsidy per grams of CO2 emitted per kilometer

Source: Transport Expertise/Ministère de l’Ecologie

A phenomenon that might be temporary

It might be alarming that the system is not financially sustainable but the Ministry of Finance said this phenomenon might only be temporary. Since car buyers anticipated the new law, many people bought their large saloon cars and SUVs before the law to be applicable, in December 2007. (more…)

Air France-KLM and China Southern, the biggest Chinese airline (by the size of its fleet, the network, and the number of passengers transported) recently announced they would partner and create a joint-venture to operate freight aircrafts. If both companies get the needed authorisations, the deal could be concluded by the end of 2008.

The newly formed company would be name AE Cargo (Asia-Europe Cargo), in which Air France will not hold more than 25% of the shares. The French-Dutch airline will however provide the CEO. Asia-Europe Cargo will develop a 10-aircraft sized fleet in the next two years. Both partners still have to determine the hub location, either in Guangzhou, Shanghai or Shenzhen.

References

• Article: La joint-venture fret entre Air France et China Southern prend forme concrète, Lloyd, Jun. 5, 2008: here
• Article: Air France-KLM: Projet de co-entreprise avec China Southern, CercleFinance.com
• Article: Fret: Air France-KLM avance en Chine avec un accord-cadre de coentreprise, AFP, Jun. 3, 2008: here
• Article: Fret : 110% de hausse depuis janvier, Challenges, Jun. 3, 2008: here
• Article: China Southern va créer une joint-venture avec Air France-KLM, Reuters, Jun. 3, 2008: here

Polish Government recently announced that the country will have its first high-speed rail line by 2020. The announcement was made during a French-Polish conference about intercity and urban rail transport. Infrastructures Minister Cezary Grabarczyk declared that this first project would link the cities of Warsaw, Poznan, and Wroclaw (west of the country). A high-speed rail line between the capital city and both western cities could, in theory, cut journey times by more than half.

€8 billion project, around 500 kilometres of tracks

The proposal will be submitted to the whole Polish Government early 3Q 2008, in order to launch the feasability studies. The Infrastructures Ministry plans to finish the preliminary studies by 2010. The Government aims to begin construction by 2014 and complete it in 2019, to start operation by 2020.

The project is evaluated at €8 billion (€6 to €7 billion for construction, and €1 billion for rolling stock), and the proposed Y-shaped-corridor has a main branch from Warsaw to Lodz, and two distinct legs going to Poznan and Wroclaw, respectively at 330 kilometres and 345 kilometres from Warsaw. With 35 trainsets running on the tracks, Minister Grabarczyk expects the trips to last around 1h30 while they are presently around 5h30 and 3h00 ! Also, what the Polish Government wants, is to link the network to the European already efficient high-speed rail network. (more…)