France

Steering Committee Representative

Jean-Guy Dufour, Ministère de l'Equipement, des Transports et du Logement (METL)

Christian Reynaud, INRETS

Links

METL

PREDIT

INRETS

On of the main research programmes in France for intermodal transport research is the PREDIT programme. The objective of this programme is to create an alternative to road transport through research into new solutions on a technical, economic, legal and structural level. Several working groups have been established within areas like; inland - sea interface, port development, inland intermodal terminals, information exchange, and improved rail operations. The programme is organised around five major targets in coherence with the national and the European transport policy:

• Development of the quality of service in public transport to make them more accessible, more comfortable and more reliable;
• Launching of new vehicles and environmental friendly transport systems;
• Safety improvement for vehicles and systems; Increased performance of companies on international markets;
• Promoting the realisation of the European transport networks

The total budget allocated to PREDIT amounts to app. 1 BEURO, spread on 5 years from where 300 MERO will be financed by the state. The 70% will be funded by research institutes, industries, transport operators, and local authorities. App. 5% of the total budget is dedicated to intermodal freight transport. PREDIT relies on four fields of RTD, gathering 13 research themes:

1. Strategic research (3%);
2. Analysis of knowledge on science and technologies useful in land transport (17%);
3. Technological objects, components, vehicles, equipment (53%);
4. Transport systems, including transport intermodality (27%).

Around 350 experts coming from ministries, public research institutes, universities, and public and private companies, ensure and supervise the progress of the programme during the five years. It aims at favouring rapprochement between public and private research centres and initiatives of co-operation between French industrials and European partners. In fact, it is one of the fields where European development is strongly involved including network interconnection, agreement of operating conditions, regulation of vehicles, etc. Several demonstration projects have been financed starting in 1999.

On of the main problems of the European intermodal transport policy is according to METL the missing link between transport research and policy. The research often reaches a dead end due to lack of political support in the implementation phase. Furthermore, there is a clear need to improve the access to European research results.

The French participation in European research projects is insufficient according to METL. Furthermore, the ministry feels that French transport research has less influence on the European transport policy compared to other countries. One of the reasons for the lacking French influence is according to the METL that the French research environments are to isolate in relation to European research. METL try to enhance the French participation in European transport research but several transport sectors are not geared to work on European research level and the national competition makes it difficult to find a common ground for participation. Co-financing in relation to European research projects can be obtained from the ministry and is evaluated on a project to project basis. Projects involving technological development can not receive financial support from the ministry.