FRANCE: The Senate’s Committee for Regional Planning & Sustainable Development has launched a fact-finding mission to examine the future of freight transport in the face of environmental concerns.
The mission’s work is expected to take around six months, with hearings being held across France. The team of 16 senators has been charged with drawing up proposals to accelerate the ‘ecological transition’ of the freight transport industry and to reduce its environmental impact; Nicole Bonnefoy and Rémy Pointereau have been appointed as rapporteurs.
The initial session on December 9 took the form of a round table about rail freight attended by Franck Agogué-Escaré, Assistant Director General for Infrastructure, Transport & the Sea in the Ministry of Ecological & Inclusive Transition, together with Frédéric Delorme from Fret SNCF, Isabelle Delon from SNCF Réseau and Raphaël Doutrebente, Director General of operator Europorte, a Getlink subsidiary. Delorme and Doutrebente are both members of the Fret Ferroviaire Français du Futur Alliance, which last summer put forward a suite of proposals to increase rail freight capacity provisionally costed at €10bn.
At the moment, 20% of greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector in France are attributable to road freight.
