Emmanuel Macron is trying to imprint his mark on ecology, even if it means overtaking his government. On Sunday November 27, the Head of State unveiled his new railway ambitions: to develop an equivalent of the Ile-de-France RER in ten French cities. In other words, the executive wishes to accelerate existing projects in order to find alternatives to the car.
An ambition that he unfolded during a sequence posted on YouTube, in which he answers questions from Internet users on ecology: “To fulfill our ecological ambition, I want us to have a great ambition. national: in ten large cities, in ten French cities, to develop an RER network, a network of urban trains.” The course is set.
The speech took on the appearance of declarations of love for the rail industry: “I fully believe in the train”, insisted Emmanuel Macron, recalling that he is “the grandson of a railway worker”. According to his entourage, it is a question of ensuring that in these large “congested metropolises, people who have commuter journeys can do them without a car, by decarbonizing their journeys thanks to these metropolitan RERs”.
This Monday, November 28, the government spokesperson, Olivier Véran provided after-sales service for this announcement at the microphone of France Inter: “We make sure that the trains no longer stop in town or do half- We multiply the rotation speed of the trains. We will have one about every 15 minutes, whereas today it sometimes makes you wait 20, 25 and sometimes 30 minutes for a train. When you have 20 terminals to go , if you know that you have to wait 3 or 4 minutes on a platform, that changes the question of the modality. (…) You take it like a tram.” However, no further details were offered. The timetable and the necessary investments are not fixed. It is Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, in charge of ecological planning, who will have to detail and then supervise these major works, said the Elysée.
The Head of State took his government by surprise and surprised the elected officials, even if the idea of investing in the metropolitan railway was already on the table. The presidency recalls that the mobility orientation law passed under the previous five-year term paved the way, with around fifteen projects under study or at the reflection stage.
It is therefore a question of “accelerating” to give priority to ten of them, adds an Elysian adviser, evoking among the probable cities selected Lille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Grenoble and Aix-Marseille. Other cities are in the running to develop their rail network, like Rennes, Grenoble or Lyon. “We are ready for Lyon, rejoiced EELV Mayor Grégory Doucet. This is a policy in everyone’s interest. Make the train great again!”
In October 2020, SNCF Réseau had submitted to the government a master plan presenting a plan for the major railway nodes, at the request of Elisabeth Borne, then Minister of Transport. Objective: to develop new metropolitan services (“SEM” for metropolitan express services or “RER” for regional express network). The Regional Express Network (RER) brings together regional trains circulating in Ile-de-France at a high rate. It has been regularly extended since the 1960s. “The RER is not just in Paris”, pleaded the president. “It’s a great goal for the ecology, the economy, the quality of life” in cities “where there is thrombosis, too much traffic”, he added.
For its part, the opposition did not fail to play its role in criticizing the exit of the president. At the microphone of Public Senate, Sandrine Rousseau affirmed that there was “no money put by the State on public transport”, seeing the announcement of the president as the result of a “meeting of com’ .”
Among the fifteen regional presidents who pleaded for “metropolitan RERs” in a column published in Le Monde on October 22, Carole Delga, PS president of the Occitanie region, encourages the government “to invest in infrastructure, and to build new ones. news “when necessary” in order to offer “faster trains for those who live on the outskirts of metropolitan areas.” The politician sees the announcement of the President of the Republic as “a response to the call of the Presidents of Regions “.
By betting on rail, Emmanuel Macron seems to be making a change of gear, while an amendment to the finance bill granting 3 billion euros to rail had been withdrawn from the text by the executive in early November. How to explain such a shift? The presidential announcement comes as Emmanuel Macron has gone to the front line to try to defend his environmental record in France. While he had promised before his re-election to go “twice as fast” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by making ecological planning a priority, environmental activists and the left-wing opposition believe that his actions still fall short.
Suddenly, after his participation in the COP27 on the climate in Sharm el-Sheikh and a meeting at the Elysée to push the French industrialists who emit the most CO2 to hasten their “decarbonization”, the Head of State turned into a youtuber to personally defend his action in videos with an offensive tone and nervous editing.
This statement on the RER comes after a series of announcements. In mid-October, the government announced “the target of 2 million electric cars produced in France by 2030, promising to invest massively in innovation and industrialization, via France 2030. plastic in fast food restaurants from 2023 and the thermal renovation of schools. New announcements should follow at the end of the year. Will the France of 2027 look like a “great ecological nation”, like the Emmanuel Macron wanted on the evening of the second round of the presidential election The road remains long.
