[New Brisavoine]

An article in The Economist this week admiring the speedy construction of the high-speed line between Tours and Bordeaux, of which I talked on the previous page (post #510), and comparing this with the fate of HS2 in England which is stuck in the sand (financial considerations, NIMBYs, lack of big engineering firms in the UK, etc).

High-speed rail in France
Where there’s a will

The Economist
January 31, 2014



RECESSION or no, France is pushing ahead with the extension of its high-speed rail network. The biggest of the three projects currently under way is the new line between Tours (where the TGV heading south from Paris stops running and starts crawling) and Bordeaux halfway down the Atlantic coast.

From high in a helicopter over fields soaked with rain, the pharaonic nature of the works becomes clear. There are 302 kms of direct track to lay, plus another 38 kms of connections to existing track. They are building 24 bridges over rivers and valleys, as well as underpasses (one almost two kilometres long), grade-separated junctions and more. Earthmoving is on a heroic scale: four times the dirt excavated for the Channel tunnel is being shifted here. The works are concentrated next to the A10 autoroute, which has been turned in places and deviations built. Flotillas of heavy equipment alternate along the route with thousands of tonnes of pre-positioned ballast. The trees nearby are up to their knees in water; it has been raining for the best part of a year and a half in this part of France.

Despite this, the €7.8 billion ($10.6 billion) project is on time and on budget, says Xavier Neuschwander, the boss of COSEA, the special-purpose entity created to build the rail line by Vinci, a big French construction and concession company. COSEA has every reason to move quickly; another Vinci-created body has a contract to run the finished track until 2061, and a third to maintain it. The sooner the trains start running, the sooner Vinci stops spending money and starts making it. The date is set for August 2017.

You can get from Paris to Bordeaux by train now in a little more than three hours; when this project is finished, it will take just over two. Alain Juppé, mayor of Bordeaux and previously prime minister of France, is an enthusiast (unsurprisingly, perhaps, for Bordeaux will pay next to nothing for it). He thinks the number of rail passengers coming to his city will rise from 9m to 20m a year. He hopes to persuade some big companies to open national headquarters in Bordeaux; several have announced plans to move away from Paris recently. An urban makeover has already turned Bordeaux into a prime tourist destination.

[...]

Across the Channel in Britain, where high-speed trains are unknown except for the little run from the Eurostar terminal at Folkestone to St Pancras station in London, debate is raging over the government’s proposal to build a high-speed connection between London to Birmingham and the north. Much is still unknown, not least how the work will be divided up (if the project goes ahead) and how the line will be run thereafter. The Tours-to-Bordeaux project may provide some useful tips.

Start with the cost. The British government is budgeting £17 billion to £21 billion ($28 billion to $35 billion), including contingency funds, to lay 140 miles (225 kms) of track from London to Birmingham. Vinci expects to spend less than half that much and lay a third more track.

[...]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schum...ed-rail-france