Everyone in the crowd, from the train driver to the stakeholder, spoke of their pride at being there, of being the first to believe it possible, and the honour they felt at seeing it come to life. And watching their faces lit with joy, it was clear all were sincere, sharing the same jubilation at taking part in an extraordinary event.
They had come to the railway station of Capdenac, in south-west France, to applaud the arrival, at precisely 1.13pm on Monday, of the first freight convoy operated by Railcoop, a cooperative enterprise created two years ago.
It was also a first for the small businesses in and around Capdenac-Gare, a rail hub and small town of around 4,500 inhabitants, situated in the Aveyron département (county). For instead of road transport, they now have a rail connection with which to send their goods directly to the city of Toulouse, some 150 kilometres further south, where their principal clients are located.
More importantly, the new link will serve the nearby industrial manufacturers, farmers and small craftsmen from Grand-Figeac, the name given to an administrative grouping of 92 small municipalities, representing a total population of 44,000, which straddle the Aveyron and Lot départements. Within the varea is a cluster of almost 200 sub-contractor firms involved in the carmaking and aerospace industries (Toulouse is where Airbus planes are assembled), dubbed Mecanic Vallée.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The freight connection launched by Railcoop this week was previously abandoned by the historic railways operator, the publicly owned SNCF, which, until the recent introduction of competition, once had a blanket monopoly on freight and passenger services in France. Railcoop plans to gradually increase the number of convoys to reach five daily return services per week by this coming January, and an extension of the line to Viviez-Decazeville, around 30 kilometres further north of Capdenac.
One of the innovations of Railcoop, whose headquarters are in Figeac, is to offer transport for very small freight loads, by the pallet. The first client for this was local company Ethiquable, specialised in organic and fair-trade retail sales. “We absolutely had to be here, to be able to benefit from their offer and reduce our carbon footprint, but also to lend support to the development of freight carried by rail in France,” said Rémi Roux, head of Ethiquable, on Monday. “It’s crucial for the ecological transition, and because politicians aren’t doing it, citizen consumers and companies have to join together.”
Railcoop hopes to soon attract more of the industrial manufacturers in the Mecanic Vallée, some of who have already signed up. “A lot of companies are waiting to see our first train before deciding,” said Nicolas Debaisieux, managing director of Railcoop. “I have high hopes for the future.”
Vincent Labarthe, president of the Grand-Figeac municipal grouping, and who is also vice-president of the local Occitanie region, attended the inauguration. “Our entrepreneurs are attentive [to the service], and I’m delighted to see several of them here today for the inauguration,” he commented. “As of the moment one can send goods by the pallet, all those producers who are the least bit organised will be interested.”
Enlargement : Illustration 2
But for the members of the Railcoop cooperative, this first venture is but the prelude to far more ambitious projects which aim to return and promote rail transport there where the SNCF has abandoned services. The biggest project among these is to re-open a passenger service crossing France between the cities of Bordeaux and Lyon, which the SNCF closed down in 2012.
Registered as a “cooperative company of collective interest”, Railcoop was created by 32 founding members in November 2019, as the French government opened up the country’s passenger rail services to competition. Its self-declared aim, as presented on its website, is to “give back a sense to rail mobility by involving citizens, railway workers, companies and local authorities”, while also placing itself as an actor in “ecological transition” and efforts to slow climate change. “Passenger transport by rail necessitates less than a 12th of the energy needed for one person or a tonne of freight to travel by road,” says Railcoop, adding that the development of rail transport “is also, indirectly, to protect biodiversity”.
Now, two years after its creation, Railcoop has 9,615 stakeholders, including around 100 businesses and associations, and a dozen local authorities like those of the towns of Vichy and Montluçon, and the Creuse département in central France. The cooperative has 24 employees, and a capital of 3.4 million euros. It was granted a licence as a rail operator in September, a first for a cooperative, and has no equivalent elsewhere in Europe. Its rolling stock is second-hand, bought from the SNCF.
No other private company is yet operating services on the French railway network, although several – including Spain’s Renfe and Italy’s Trenitalia – are in the running to operate services like Paris-Lyon-Milan, and the regional connection between Marseille and Nice.
Railcoop is eyeing mostly east-west-east lines, like that of Bordeaux to Lyon, which it plans to make a twice-daily return service, and also the shorter links connecting Lyon and Limoges, and Lyon with Montluçon. Other projects are to open Thionville-Lyon and Lille-Nantes connections.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
But the cooperative has come up against obstacles across the track in applying for authorisation for its planned railroad routes. In September, just 55% of its requests to the SNCF network arm concerning use of railroad sections on the Bordeaux-Lyon service met with approval, Nicolas Debaisieux announced last month. Another 34% of the rail sections granted for the service were not what Railcoop had mapped, meaning the trains would run to different stations and at times that were inconvenient to it. Meanwhile, 11% of their requests were left without a response, added Debaisieux.
As a result, the Railcoop board have delayed the planned opening of the service – originally due for next June – to December 2022, to allow for further negotiations.
During those negotiations, Railcoop can count on the support of local authorities involved by the project, and which see the service as helping to revitalise their communities which lie outside of the major lines operated by the SNCF. “We need to be given guarantees because our development lies there, on this diagonal [line] which has potential, and which we must build together,” commented Véronique Pouzadoux, mayoress of Gannat, a small town of around 6,00 inhabitants in central France which the Railcoop trains would serve. Frédéric Laporte, mayor of the nearby town of Montluçon (with a population of 57,000), also on the Railcoop route, has urged the cooperative’s stakeholders to lobby the transport minister to intervene to unblock the situation.
“The objective with this [Bordeaux-Lyon] service is both to reconnect rural areas with each other and the big cities, and to develop and revitalise the town centres around these stations where the train is to return,” added Guillaume Sournac, an official with the Livradois-Forez local rail services management syndicate in the central Auvergne region. But he said he can “understand” the problems for the SNCF: “One understands that for them, it’s a change of an era, with the arrival of newcomers, and that it’s difficult for them to adapt to these new demands.”
Michaël Laplantine, Railcoop’s deputy manager in charge of railroad safety, is similarly understanding. “I would always offer some defence for the SNCF,” he said. “It sometimes has to make choices that are dictated to it by politicians. We are the first to ask for things which are rarely requested. We position ourselves in regions which are almost no longer served, [and] we come with questions which the SNCF didn’t think it would have to face so soon. In short, we’ve got all the initial problems.”
But the staff at Railcoop appear to have no doubts about the future promise of their enterprise. Train driver Julien Legros led the first freight convoy at Capdenac on Monday. He used to work for the SNCF, but chose to leave it for Railcoop, moving house to take part in a project he strongly believes in. “And I regret nothing at all,” he said. “We knew it would be complicated, because we’re creating a line that crosses France through the Massif Central. But we were also told it would be hard to open up our freight service, and we succeeded.”
Michaël Laplantine also joined Railcoop from the SNCF, where he had worked for more than 20 years. “We need to improve our environment, and I find it fantastic that people like you or me can decide to get things moving, without waiting for the aid of whoever, and set up a project which is beneficial for all of society,” he said.
He believes strongly that after decades of massive investment by the SNCF in high-speed rail links, to the detriment of the activity and maintenance of secondary railroad lines, a page may now be turning, and notably to the backdrop of the climate crisis and a change in the lifestyle choices of some, now resettling away from the big cities, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We’re at a strategic turning point, and as we’re the first to take the turn it’s a little complicated, but we’ll get there,” he said.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse