And after November 23?

The 12th Objective OFP day, associated with the 4F Alliance, was a strong railway moment, carrying an innovative dynamic. But we must now manage to mobilize all the actors, which will not be possible without your active contribution.

Hence, attached, this text/manifesto in the continuity of our morning of 23/11 and the exchanges it triggered.

This "manifesto" proposes the lines of force of rail freight that the current five-year period, in our opinion, must put into action.

We propose and ask you, if you share this vision, which is also a guide for action, to participate in the propagation of this manifesto by distributing it in all your contact networks.

Rail freight: the future is now

2022 will go down in history as the year of the changeover to another world which will have to take up an abundance of challenges, including those of the climate, decarbonization and the production of clean energy. There is an urgent need for action.

Rail freight has a power of decarbonization and energy frugality due to the metal-on-metal rolling of the wheel on the rail, which calls for making it a structuring player in intermodal green logistics, a criterion for the location of economic activities.

This involves an industrial project whose lines of force are becoming clearer:

1. The development of a national rail development plan extended by intermodality, road and river, open to Europe and beyond, connecting or reconnecting territories and ports to rail Europe.

2. Densification of the use of the network, passengers and freight. It will capture the spiral of increasing railway returns, a necessary condition for the Network's financial balance. This new look at the Network is decisive for doubling the market share of freight, the objective of the Climate Law, and putting France on the trajectory of returning to its European rail rank.

3. The impetus of a new rail/road alliance, an alternative to the energy and rare metals abyss that would be a European "all-road" system saturating infrastructures. This “win/win” partnership will open up a development space for the French road pavilion and will bring road logistics know-how to rail.

4. A new regional railway anchorage, its ability to detect traffic, pick it up, distribute it, pool it, feed high-productivity arteries. Each territory is a particular case: capillaries, branches, intermodalities, port hinterlands. The Regions, territories, cities, shippers, CCIs, CESER... in connection with the decentralized SNCF Réseau, must seize this underestimated field of innovation: towards intermodal Regional Action Plans Attention! Centralized digital information cannot replace know-how and links in the field

5. Investing in a new modernity of the public heritage that is the rail network, whose non-TGV lines are among the most obsolete in Europe, increasing its capacity, its reliability, adapting the size required by the handset, develop cybersecurity...

6. The reconciliation of short-term constraints and the long-term objective. This is undoubtedly the greatest difficulty. This is demonstrated by the current situation which, if we left the market dynamics alone to play, the cost of electricity being higher than that of oil, would lead to a counter-modal shift from rail to road and to serious economic difficulties for the operators. In the same way, we must stop the spread of monomodal road logistics platforms which, de facto, lead to European "all road". Encourage the “winners” of a carbon economy to invest in green logistics? * *

The conditions are met for a strategic freight, territorial and European shock, bringing the consensus, societal, political, trade union that France needs so much, generator of motivation, creator of green jobs for young people. Territories, operators, SNCF Réseau, State, we must initiate this dynamic, make it a political priority, a strong axis of the Network Performance contract, include it in a Programming Law on rail freight committing several five-year periods.

Jacques CHAUVINEAU Philippe FRANCOIS André THINIERES

President of Objectif OFP Vice-Presidentt General Delegate