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86 comments on DrumBeat: May 14, 2006

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AlanfromBigEasy on May 14, 2006 - 8:09am

France to go 100% electric railroads

Jacques Chirac, the French president, pledged in his 2006 New Year Address that by 2026 no SNCF or RATP train would be powered by fossil fuels."

"France will run trains free from fossil fuel, says Chirac." The Times
(London), Friday,January 6, 2006, p54.

This promise will be relatively easy to keep because electrified lines carry perhaps 80 percent of all French rail traffic - and most of the traction energy used by
French trains is provided by nuclear power stations. It will be interesting to see how they intend to replace
diesel railcars on branch lines and diesel locomotives on industrial sidings.

Leroy W. Demery, Jr.

copied from his post on another forum,

Alan Drake

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Tom DC in VA on May 14, 2006 - 8:23am

Replacing diesel switchers wouldn't be hard - just use a plug-in version of the Green Goat.

http://www.railpower.com/products_hl_ggseries.html

Upgrading low-volume branch lines will be fairly expensive, because there are so many of them, making up quite a bit of the route-miles.

http://www.bueker.net/trainspotting/map.php?file=maps/french-network/french-network.gif

But if they are going to do it, better sooner than later. Perhaps they could fund it by raising their petrol/diesel taxes even more.

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danp on May 14, 2006 - 9:14am

They don't have to replace the diesel engines, they just need to fill up with biodiesel. (Or convert the engines to use ethanol instead, which I've seen somewhere not being very complicated.)

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Johnny Buffalkill on May 14, 2006 - 1:36pm

That would depend on how much diesel they are currently using. I've been critical of bio-fuels like ethanol and biodiesel mainly because, at least here in the USA, we won't be able to make nearly enough of either to replace the amounts of gasoline and diesel that we use, but the general public doesn't know this, so there is this false hope that there is no need to prepare for less energy in the future. (Soil depletion and letting people elsewhere starve so we can drive also factor in to my criticism.) I am not against any use of biofuel, I just think it needs to be done sparingly and carefully.

Unfortunately I have no idea how much diesel fuel France's rail system requires so I can't say if it would be possible for them to switch their rail to biodiesel. I have only looked into automobile fuel in the US so far. If anyone knows more about that, they could shed more light on the feasability of biodiesel trains.

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alistairC on May 14, 2006 - 3:39pm

I have worked for the SNCF, so my guess is that they are planning on achieving this goal largely by shutting down the non-electrified branch lines, which aren't profitable anyway.

I am proud to have been associated with the French railways, because they are the best in the world; But in fact that's not saying much, they could be so much better. The business is between a rock and a hard place : a proud tradition of public service is compromised by the opening up of the European Union "transport market", which means they have to concentrate on the profitable sectors (or else see them cherry-picked by Euro rivals), to the detriment of the "dead wood", i.e. those services which are socially or economically useful but not profitable.

This is especially frustrating in the area of freight : trucking stuff around is so much more convenient for businesses, and generally cheaper, due to the fact that, compared to electrified rail, truckers get to externalise a large proportion of their true costs, onto government, other road users, people who live near roads, the environment, the whole planet...