In Mars 2022, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, Minister Delegate to the Minister of Ecological Transition, in charge of Transport, and Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Recovery, in charge of Industry, presented the first 5 winners of the “Digitization and Decarbonization of Rail Transport” call for expressions of interest.

As part of France 2030’s support for technological and industrial innovation, the government has set up an acceleration process for sectors identified as strategic for France in 2030. The aim is to support innovations and their production start-ups that will enable us to achieve the ecological transition, and strengthen France’s economic competitiveness, territorial cohesion, sovereignty and resilience.

The transport and mobility sector is one of the priorities identified to meet France 2030’s overall ambition of better living, better production and better understanding. Over the past few years, this sector has been undergoing major industrial and service transformations, in particular as a result of the ecological transition and the digital revolution. The health crisis has also had a major impact on the transport of people and goods, and could have a long-term impact on market models.

Less energy-consuming, lighter and less expensive to install and maintain, for both trainsets and rails, these new-generation trains will have many advantages. They will also enable us to experiment with new work and maintenance techniques.

The call for expressions of interest on the digitalization and decarbonization of rail transport was launched on July 28, 2021. The main objective of the expected projects is to make rail transport more attractive and less costly for both passengers and freight. To achieve this, three priority investment themes have been identified and selected by the State to benefit from exceptional support: light rail, digitization of the rail network and automation of rail freight operations.

• The development of light rail should make it possible to propose appropriate solutions for the operation and renewal of small rail lines, which play a part in regional cohesion, in line with the government’s action plan for fine rail lines launched in February 2020. Lighter, less costly trains and more economical track and signalling components should create a virtuous circle: lower costs, more trains, more passengers, thus improving the economic equation for these lines.
• The digitization of the rail network will enable more trains to run on time on the same infrastructure, taking full advantage of connectivity, precise train positioning, centralized data and network control in rail control towers.
• Finally, the increasing automation of rail freight operations should contribute to the goal of doubling its modal share by 2030. Thanks to increased digitalization of operations, marshalling, wagon coupling and locomotives, rail freight can increase the economic relevance of single wagon transport, serving the needs of our industrial regions.

ADEME’s call for expressions of interest in the digitalization and decarbonization of rail transport has been a resounding success, with the projects submitted representing a potential investment of over one billion euros, from companies of all sizes offering innovative solutions, often in consortia with universities or research institutes. Jean-Baptiste Djebbari praises the strong involvement of local mobility authorities in the projects, who are keen to see territorial demonstrators or pilot projects, to validate the technical and economic relevance of the proposed solutions in representative operational use, before they are scaled up.

Jean-Baptiste Djebbari and Agnès Pannier-Runacher today announced the funding of the first 5 light rail projects and rail systems adapted to light rail, representing over €185 million of investment and supported under France 2030, to the tune of around €75 million:

• Innovative Light Train, led by SNCF with a number of industrial partners, including CAF, Texelis, Thales and Alstom, and also involving the Ferrocampus of the Nouvelle Aquitaine region, in Saintes, Charente-Maritime, which will serve as an experimental center and laboratory for this light train and its rail system.
• Draisy, led by SNCF, in Grand-Est and Hauts-de-France, with industrialist Lohr and SMEs such as IBS for batteries and Stations-e for electric recharging systems in stations.
• Ecotrain, led by STRATIFORME, supported by the Occitanie region, in partnership with manufacturers including Socofer, and the IMT Mines Telecom engineering school;
• Flexmove, led by AKKA Technologies and SICEF (Société d’Ingénierie, de Construction et d’Exploitation de la Ferromobile), with industrial partners including Alstom and Systra, and with the Université Gustave Eiffel, and which aims to deploy a demonstrator in Occitanie.
• SIG4LDFT, led by Alstom in Saint-Ouen and Villeurbanne, and which could be called upon to test its innovations with the Train Léger Innovant project on the Ferrocampus in Saintes.