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Six years after the derailment of a passenger train at Brétigny-sur-Orge station in Essonne, which caused the death of seven people, the state of the rail network in France still leaves something to be desired. This is the conclusion of a technical audit carried out by the Public Establishment of Railway Safety. The confidential report of this independent body, dubbed the " railway policeman ", was unveiled by our colleagues from the newspaper Le Parisien . SNCF minimizes and defends itself.
Investigators of the " railway gendarme " have screened fourteen thousand kilometers of railways, almost half of the SNCF network in France. And the report of their audit is worrying. The maintenance problems of the infrastructure at the origin of accidents such as that of Brétigny in 2013 persist.
Electric cables rustled by rats, loose or missing bolts on the splints, signaling defects ... The authors of the report point out tens or even hundreds of anomalies. They also question the follow-up, according to them, of the maintenance of the network, with some repairs that have been on the waiting list for a year.
30 % fewer train accidents
The SNCF for its part defends itself against these accusations and evokes on the contrary an improvement of the safety and the number of rail accidents, which fell by 30% in three years. It also ensures that the renovation of the network is its priority with 3 billion euros invested each year and controls that were never as common as today.
The Minister of Transport, Elisabeth Borne, questioned about this report was also reassuring. She promised to be vigilant and make corrections while noting that the EPSF has the opportunity to shut down equipment and traffic. If he did not do it, she suggests, there were no immediate security problems.