Abandoned railway lines: the Railcoop cooperative wants to restore them

National rail lines are opening up to competition and this is a good point for ecology.

It's all fresh, it dates from last December.

The European Union has declared the opening up of national rail lines to competition.

Until now, the SNCF was both the owner of the rail networks in France and also their main operator.

But now, other operators will be able to run trains with passengers.

The opportunity for some players to take advantage of this opening to competition to accelerate the ecological transition.

This is the case of the company Railcoop, a cooperative company of collective interest which will open a freight line in 2021 and a passenger line in 2022.

How Railcoop makes an ecological contribution to transport?

Railcoop's ecological argument is to operate SNCF lines which have been abandoned in recent decades.

Because, over time, budget cuts in the SNCF have given priority to the Paris-Province axes and to certain axes between large cities, to the detriment of the finer links of the territory.

This means that today, a third of stations are no longer served.

While it must be said, the train is an alternative 12 times less polluting than the car for transporting passengers and objects.

Could this improve mobility in France and encourage people to take their cars less and no longer take the plane for domestic flights?

The future will tell, but it is a real opportunity.

Especially since more than 90% of French people live within 10 kilometers of a train station.

This is very beneficial for Railcoop, which wants to invest in these neglected rail lines and thus reduce the carbon footprint of mobility.