ABSTRACT
The French railway reform, implementing the 91/440 European union directive in many ways does not go as far as the reforms implemented in many European countries. After a description of the legal and regulatory framework, and recent of its evolution towards a more regionalised approach, this chapter on France presents the position of the various actors in the new regime. The chapter focuses on the regionalisation experiments currently undertaken in order to test a new, more decentralised, form of control on the regional passenger transport services provided by the Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer François (SNCF). The SNCF was itself responsible for the services at the national level and therefore acted as such as a ‘Transport Authority’. Its strategy gave, in agreement with the State, more importance to the high speed network, to the detriment of the traditional speed network.
