Memoire Online - Le projet de grand contournement ferroviaire du bassin parisien au depart du port du Havre dans le cadre des corridors de fret européens

Memory of D.E.S.S. Transport, Logistics and Communication of the international exchanges

under the direction of Mr. E.Auphan

Promotion 1998/1999

THE PROJECT OF GREAT RAILWAY SKIRTING OF THE PARIS BASIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE PORT OF LE HAVRE WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE EUROPEAN CORRIDORS OF FREIGHT

Novel LAUTERFING September 1999

THE PROJECT OF GREAT RAILWAY SKIRTING OF THE PARIS BASIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE PORT OF LE HAVRE WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE EUROPEAN CORRIDORS OF FREIGHT

INTRODUCTION 6

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PORT OF LE HAVRE : A NEED 9

A. The massification of the maritime transport 9

B. Compete with between « hand ports » 17

C. The port : multimode platform of transshipment 22

D. The project Le Havre « Port 2000 » 24

A. Importance of the hinterland 42

B. Irrigation of the traffics between the various means of transport in the back-country

C. A new context favourable with the development of the rail-bound transport

D. Shuttles 57

III. THE RAILWAY PROJECT OF SKIRTING OF THE PARIS BASIN WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE EUROPEAN CORRIDORS OF FREIGHT 63

A. The saturation of the Parisian node 66

B. Route and evaluation of the project 68

C. The project of GCP within the framework of the corridors of freight 77

D. Competitor projects of Antwerp and Rotterdam 82

CONCLUSION 85

Bibliography 87

Vis-a-vis a new European competing context between the seaports, it appears clearly that the project of the port of Le Havre « Port 2000 » of development of its nautical capacities, reception and treatment of super door increasingly large containers, is essential to answer the policy armateuriale of rationalization and massification of the maritime transport. The application of this project would make it possible the harbor place to have major opportunity to continue like one of « hand ports » European of the container.

But the competitiveness of the maritime transport is also played ground. The density and the quality of the terrestrial service road of a port become increasingly determining in the choice of stopover of the ship-owners. The surface transports must integrate the characteristics of massification to effectively serve the containers on an increasingly large hinterland as the borders open.

The railway technique appears to be ready to answer this new concept of massification of the terrestrial service roads on long distances.

The opening of the national networks, the liberalization of the railway mode and a European standardization of the techniques of rail-bound transport are nevertheless obligatory to make this mode competitive and to propose an alternative to the road. It goes there from its survival.

This is why the port of Le Havre emitted the wish to be equipped with a railway service road dedicated to freight within the framework of the corridors of freight, first steps towards the liberalization of the rail-bound transport in Europe, by a route circumventing a saturated Parisian node, by the northern By-pass thus serving is and the south-east of France initially (natural hinterland of Le Havre), the Central Europe and the famous one « blue banana » in the second time. This axis would equip Le Havre with favorable conditions to extend its hinterland and to be able to face the competition of the large European ports of north which take very whole Europe for hinterland.

The importance of this project is such as the Norman port depends mainly on this one to remain among the large ports European pivots.

In order to face the growing competition between the european sea-ports in activity off super cellular linen ships, it is clearly necessary to develop the « Port 2000 » project, At Le Havre harbor concerning the capacity expansion, reception and treatment off bigger and bigger ships, and to answer to the shipowner' S politic off rationalization and massification off maritime transport.

The realization off this project would place Le Havre harbor amongst the hand european containers ports.

Drank this competition is also taking decisive place overland.The quality and the accessibility and the Land infrastructures become more and more in the shipowners choices to touch At has port.

The terrestrial transport must integrate the characteristics off massification, to convey the containers until the hinterland which are becoming bigger and bigger thanks to the opening off the frontiers.

The rail way technic seems to Be the most qualified to answer to this new concept off massification off Land ways one long distances.

The opening off the rail networks, the liberalization off the rail ways and year european rail technics uniformity are nevertheless compulsory to agreement has significant place to this sector.

That' S why Le Havre harbor wish to Be equiped with rail infrastructures for freight transport, following year itinerary winding round the saturated pole off Paris, serving the east and south-east off France first (natural Le Havre hinterland), then Central Europa and the famous « blue banana ».

Favorable This network would provide conditions to extend the hinterland, in order to face the competition off the hand north european sea-ports which consider Al Europa have hinterland.

Important This project is so that Le Havre port is depending one this successes to stay amongst the bigger european sea-port.

INTRODUCTION

In the process of universalization of the economy, transport played and plays a paramount part. The passage to the globalisation and the intensification of the international exchanges was indeed supported by the technical evolutions of transport such as the increase in the speed and the capacity of the maritime transport, the fall of its costs, without forgetting the rise of telecommunications.

The universalization of the economy causes to put in competition the national economies and their companies. The control of transport appears essential for the areas or for the States, quality by abundance and the convenience of their infrastructures is economic factor of development and competitiveness. Better transport lowers the cost prices, makes it possible to extend the zone of distribution of the products, contributes to a greater satisfaction of the users, and to an improvement of the productivity of the companies and especially manifest an increase in exchanges. These exchanges are facilitated by telecommunications.

International transport is thus essential for the national economy and on the level of the international competitiveness of the industrial companies for which the logistic policy and the operation of the chains of transport appear ready to reinforce their trading positions.

The performance of speed, the development of the techniques of combined or multimode transport support the internationalization of the production and the markets. The complementarity of all the means of transport contributes to the development of logistics because the company stresses the optimization of the operation of the whole of the chain of transport and on the control of the routing like method of control of the production and the outlets.

All these factors of intensification of the international exchanges, of integration of the concerns logistic in the strategies of production or commercial of the companies make that international transport became a capital element for competitiveness in this sector, industries and the whole of the economy.

The development of the great export thus confers on transport an economic weight and an important strategic role in the economy. The capacity and the speed of transport are elements of competitiveness in the logistic strategies of the companies. It is then advisable for the national authorities to offer infrastructures able to attract traffics taking part in the increase in exchanges and the economic development of their space.

The seaports appear initially as most important infrastructures of transport because they are the direct interface with intercontinental transport by sea by which is made two thirds of the world carriage of goods. Their capacity to generate traffics and to treat freight effectively are the principal assets of a harbor place. But the importance of the seaport depends also and more and more on wide on its hinterland, the service road of its back-country.

Indeed, the ports serving the principal surfaces of distribution, consumption and production on the continent will tend to becoming the principal continental entrance doors of goods because the harbor hierarchy is based more and more on the extent and the terrestrial service road of the hinterland. Because the ports represent for the intercontinental ships of the obliged points of passage of the goods but they are only points of transit where the goods change mode. It is necessary then to convey it by terrestrial way in order to serve the hinterland.

The surface transports thus have a role very important to play here. The water way, the road and the rail thus profit also from the increase in the international exchanges.

But it is the rail which, in Europe, draws the attention because it is with the European directives a mode in full expansion at the intracommunity level bringing an effective solution to the saturation of the road transport. The great European harbor places project railway lines devoted to freight serving the back-country and the zones of distribution. The intermodality between the maritime transport and the rail-bound transport is thus necessary and even obligatory in order to offer to the companies located in the back-country of the effective logistic solutions as regards transport.

Such is the case of the harbor platform of Le Havre which, with the development of its harbor capacities, emitted the wish to be served by a fast and effective railway line devoted to the carriage of goods. This line would serve initially is France by circumventing the Parisian node by north, is Europe to the Austro-Hungarian border in the second time. This line would thus make it possible the port of Le Havre to consolidate its surface of attraction even to increase it by effective means of transport, and to compete with the other European ports having emitted the same type of project.

However, one can wonder why the rail causes T it such an interest with close to the European harbor authorities since it until under was now used, and this mainly to the detriment of the road.

Which are in addition the projects of the port to face the growth of the transport of the maritime transport and with the strong European competition ? Why the port preaches T it it adjustment of a great railway skirting of the Parisian node ?

To answer these questions, we will initially study the need for developing the processing capacities of the goods of the port of Le Havre vis-a-vis the massification of the maritime transport and with European competition.

In the second time, we will develop the importance of the hinterland of a seaport then the role and the importance of the rail within this hinterland.

We will proceed in a last time to the study of the railway project of great skirting towards the East of Europe and the contribution foreseeable of this one with the port of Le Havre.

It is useful to recall that this project and its present study express the will alone of the port of Le Havre to adapt to the new evolutions as regards transport likely to generate for the harbor site a strong and durable growth.

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PORT OF LE HAVRE : A NEED

The maritime transport knows, since the universalization of the economy supported by the technical evolutions as regards transport, a strong progression in the carriage of goods.

The intensification of the international exchanges indeed involved a change and a reorganization of the maritime transport. The increase in the capacity of the ships and the fall of the costs of transport pushed the merchant marine towards the massification of the infrastructures. The ports are from now on constrained to accommodate increasingly large ships with increasingly important volumes and to treat them under the best possible conditions.

A race with gigantism is thus launched between the various European ports which assert the place of door of entry of Europe.

The Port authority of Le Havre which has assets to put forward in this fight thus emitted a project of development of the capacities of its infrastructures in order to attract a more significant part of traffic and to have effective and powerful means of reforwarding of freight in its hintertland.

A. The massification of the maritime transport

The maritime transport has a paramount role in the new context of universalization of the economy, process which is characterized by the multiplicity of the networks of transnational exchanges, the intensification of the circulation of flows of goods on a worldwide scale, the prevalence of telecommunications and the concentration of the activities of production between a reduced number of areas economically dynamic. The exchanges develop but concentrate in some large poles corresponding to the developed countries of the northern hemisphere and in particular the countries of the Triad North America/European Union/South Asia are (Japan). The world trade of containers is mainly carried out between these industrialized areas. The fact is that the exchanges is/western are twice more important in volume than NORTH-SOUTH flows between the industrialized countries and those in the process of development.

In 1996, the three geographical areas carry out 81,7% of the world containerized traffic.

Asia, which multiplied by nearly 8 its traffic in 15 years, whereas Europe has only triplet his activity during same time, affirms from now on its hegemony on the world scene.

The companies on their side open and function on an increasingly broad space over the borders ; they disperse their activities, are delocalized in order to conquer new markets and to find conditions optimal of operation in particular for the labor. This evolution is carried out on a worldwide scale thanks to telecommunications and the techniques of transport. The latter being increasingly powerful, the distances time and the costs of exploitation are consequently reduced

The causes of success of the maritime transport of tangible properties are thus obvious :

The maritime transport is adapted perfectly to the gigantism of the infrastructures. The total absence of linear infrastructure of the maritime transport admits the massification of volumes by the gigantism of the ships.

The massification is the most spectacular form of the change of the maritime transport : giant tankers, super container ships, increasingly heavy final infrastructures, increasingly wide surfaces of storage.

Gigantism answers in the search of an increasingly large productivity as regards maritime transport : it does not cause a reduction speed, the loading and unloading proceeds more quickly, the construction of the ships is less expensive (their number is more reduced), the exploitation is cheaper bus plus the ship is larger, less the consumption of energy is important, and manpower of the crews are more reduced.

The maritime transport thus fulfills the requirements of the owner for whom gigantism reduces the costs and allows to offer to the companies more competitive costs of transport.

The maritime transport thus returns largely counts some in the logistic strategies of the companies aiming at providing a product available in a place and at the time wanted according to the best cost ratio/effectiveness.

Leaves the traffic container in the whole of the sea traffic in 1988 and 1995
1988	32,8%
1995	38,3%

The importance of the investments born of the modern techniques of the maritime transport (ships container ships, parks of containers, ships carriers) encouraged the maritime companies to be linked in pools to exploit these materials. These agreements are very numerous today and the great company-conferences work in pool on the majority of the lines which they exploit. The following stage of integration of the maritime transport consists in sharing all the human and commercial means by creating an entity in which the companies are erased behind a common denomination and work out their marketing strategy together. These conventions are called « consortia ».

Thus, from the old conferences, agreements of juridically independent companies made up in the years 1970 in order to ensure a regular service road stable tariffs, by envisaging the ports of call, the frequency of touched, the division of freight, were born from the regroupings more or less integrated in the form of pools or of consortia going until ensuring the financing of the ships jointly carries containers. To the difference in the maritime conferences, pools and consortia, do not only aim at regularizing the filling of the ships and the freight charges. They appear by the creation of ad hoc legal entities : G.I.E or companies, managed independently of the companies founders.

The pools are agreements between companies aiming at distributing the traffic containerized by sharing the means of exploitation and possibly the receipts and expenditure. The object of the pool relates primarily to the time harmonization, the exchanges of spaces aboard the ships (slots), each company preserving its own marketing policy and its network of agencies. Within a consortium, integration relates to spaces ships, the schedules, the receipts and expenditure and can reach even financial commercial management ships carries containers.

But the increase in the fixed assets in the ships with the generalization of the ships overpanamax and the commercial need to improve the costs at ends of competitiveness, by the optimization of average the techniques, led lately to the bursting of the integrated consortia and their replacement by new entities between armaments known as « méga-alliances ». These méga-alliances gather the transport capacities of their members in an offer of services common to the customers. They make it possible to offer up to 4 weekly departures per geographical area.

Five alliances were thus created between 1995 and 1998 on the relation Europe/the Far East :

The response given by the armaments to the requirements of productivity, quality of service and profitability, was not limited to the new forms of partnership and the increase in the size of the ships. The reorganization of the procedures also related to the configuration of the harbor service roads by instituting a differentiation within the maritime services. Traditionally, the maritime regular lines were organized according to pendular displacements' of ships between two continents.

The first innovation was the creation of lines around the world in 1984 by American APL, follow-up of the Taiwanese EVERGREEN whose ships connect the transpacific crossings and deck chairs while circulating, for the ones, in the direction « eastbound » (ship going towards the east), and for the others, in the direction « westbound » (ship going towards the west). Today, this concept of service road around the world was not generalized, only armaments EVERGREEN, CGM, OCL and TRICON adopted this type of organization.

The second change which has affected the scheduling of the regular lines results from the will of the armaments to reduce the number of touched transoceanic ships and to structure their service roads between satellite ports pivots (hand ports), and ports whose hierarchisation is in the course of reinforcement because of introduction of the ships overpanamax.

The ship-owners thus developed ships container ships of a capacity of approximately 7000 not serving EVP that a restricted number of ports having very developed functions of collector and distributer because the container ships serve only multimode platforms of transshipment effectively serving the UTI on the back-country.

The UTI (Units of Intermodal Transport) also largely contributed to the massification of the maritime transport. Called more usually containers, these units are limp standardized which allow an arrangement much more rational in the ships, the increase in the capacities and the lowering of the costs of transport. The container protects the goods which it contains and allows thanks to its dimensions standardized to accelerate times of loading and unloading and the number of revolutions of the ships. One of the principal virtues of the container is to authorize the combination of the various means of transport, without breaking bulk. The specificity of the standard and interchangeable container to be makes extremely practical means of transport of it as soon as it was about an intermodal transport, from where the name of Intermodal Unit of Transport.

Initially, the massification stressed the size of the ships thanks to the revolution of the container which allowed the marginalisation of the transport of the diversified goods.

The massification of the sea traffic thus involved the need for the ship-owners for covering the whole of the world market, because the more one ship has a great capacity, the more the load is high, the more the stopovers are long, fewer the touched ports, longer the distances between the ports. Competition between the ship-owners also became very strong : largest increase and the small ones disappear. The competition A constrained to increase the frequency of their service roads while compressing the costs, and the solution was the growth of the size of the ships and the regrouping of the armaments, and what involves the elimination of certain ports.

Essentially, the maritime economy is thus characterized today in the wake of the globalisation and the growth of the intercontinental trade, by the concentration of the large armaments which join or amalgamate, by a scaling of the boats put in line and final infrastructures of transshipment.

Accompanying this evolution, the number of the touched ports falls with the profit of those of them having a continental dimension : volume necessary to justify the stopover increases indeed with the size of the ships.

The ports having very important capacities of reception will be thus selected to treat the giant container ships. Is then delivered a true race to gigantism also on the level them final infrastructures in order to to attract the giant ships borrowing the maritime grand boulevards.

C. Compete with between « hand ports »

With the multiplication of the very large ships and the phenomenon of jumboisation which knows the merchant navy, one attends a concentration of flows because of a frantic search for saving of time and scale, towards a reduced number of transhipment ports. This movement of concentration of the traffics on the hand-ports (principal ports) of grouping-deblocking to the detriment of the multipolar service road makes more intense the competitions between the European ports. Currently, each port claims to be the door of Europe.

The role of the ports is thus particularly important : the crucial moments of a transport are displacements on line of the ships (speed, capacity, safety, reliability), but more especially the operations at the ends of handling, loading and unloading, the majority long and expensive. It is on the phases of immobility and not of movement that the attention concentrates.

Indeed, the startup the true ones « mastodons » floating and their exploitation by méga-consortia or méga-alliances can only reinforce the tendency to the concentration of the traffics on a number of basic ports limited on each continent, that is to say two or three in Europe. However, if the port cannot answer waiting of the large ship-owners, not only it will not be able to follow the growth rate waited of the traffic in Northern Europe (+8% per annum of the traffic container) but it will be relegated in the category of the secondary ports (satellite ports) which will be served by the large ones « feeders » of 2000 to 3000 EVP since the ports pivots, or hand ports, with in prospect displacement for the industrial activities and commercial towards these principal ports. The reception of the large container ships from 6000 to 8000 EVP will thus require nautical capacities that few ports are likely to offer.

The stake is thus of very first order. The candidates with the hand-ports will fight a true battle to reach this statute.

It thus acted for the large European ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Bremen, Le Havre... to be able to treat under optimum conditions for reliability, the stopovers of the méga container ships aligned by the large armaments.

Because, because of the pressing need for profitability, the ship does not remain any more the major part of time at the stopovers for unloading ; it always tends to being moving, perpetually under operation. The continuation of this objective implies within the harbor installations the simplification of the operations of handling, the use of the units of load (containers), the specialization of the operations of transport by the introduction of the techniques aiming at simplifying, to see to remove the operations of handling in order to accelerate the number of revolutions of the ships. The loading and the unloading of the large modern ships require moreover of the specific harbor equipment. This equipment (basins, gantries, materials and surfaces of storage) allows a very high production (2 minutes for the potting and the discharge of a container) but involves a considerable investment.

The profitability of such equipment (harbor ships and installations) thus requires a concentration of the traffic on a limited number of ports of the same maritime frontage, ships of less capacity, the feeders, then serving the secondary ports starting from these principal ports. This concentration will continue to be exerted in the future with the profit of the most important ports, and of the increasingly full deflections of trade to envisage, as well with the importation as with export.

Let us note that the traffic in tonnage of a port reflects the quality of the harbor infrastructures less and less. It is the diversity of the treated goods, the services present (reception, maintenance, repair, restoration, customs, etc...), conditioning, stock management, of labelling, the quality of the units of handling, the convenience of the infrastructures which define the value of the harbor equipment. These characteristics are likely to collect the traffics of the categories of goods with strong added value (containers for example whose added value is 12 times stronger than that of hydrocarbons).

The rationalization of harbor work and the reduction of the number of the dockers are also on the agenda in order to increase the productivity and to offer competitive tariffs of stopover. The variations of the cost of the labor are reflected in the price of the stopover : to discharge container ships, one needs against in Le Havre 19 men 10 only in Antwerp ; for a container, the cost of handling reached in 1991 1125 FR. in Le Havre and 750 FR. in Antwerp.

The large European ports have very vast spaces which allow the versatility, they are organizations polyfonctionnels offering a diversity of equipment marked by the multiplication of the number of basins (Hamburg : 65 basins). The length of quay is also an indication of capacity of reception of the large ships (Rotterdam : 40 km length of quay).

The current tendency for the harbor authorities is to develop the capacities of reception of super the container ships whose added value and generalization in the maritime transport make them impossible to circumvent.

Indeed, the transport of containers largely contributed to the massification of the maritime transport and the changes which were followed from there. The méga container ships only use a network of lines limited served by some large ports. Competition between the principal ports of the same maritime frontage is very strong.

Also, the giant container ships serve only the ports majors which have the capacity to run out the goods thanks to a diversified ground network, extended and dense.

The port major becomes consequently a great intermodal center of exchanges, wearing of access to the continent.

In Europe, from the geographical point of view, the distribution of the ports is asymmetrical : the main part of the ports is installed on the continental littoral of the North Sea (Northern Range). The geographical proximity of ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Le Havre, Hamburg, Bremen can only reinforce one competition already very strong.

C. The port : multimode platform of transshipment

The European Commission became aware of the paramount role of the platforms of transshipment while working on the directing diagram of the seaports. The latter represent a key sector for European transport and the European economy since they are the interface between the European Union and the other continents. The maritime function is the motive fluid of the economic activity.

The ports represent, for the intercontinental traffics, of the obliged points of passage of the goods which are collected there and treated but they are only points of transit where freight changes means of transport. It is necessary then to convey it by terrestrial way in order to serve the hinterland or to give the responsability it aboard the ships (after the terrestrial pre-routing) to dispatch it.

In that the seaport resembles of much a multimode platform, the door of access to the continent. It is the interface between the maritime transport and the surface transports.

Thus, the new conditions of navigation (gigantism) create massive arrivals and by waves of goods, requiring good systems of surface transports in order to evacuate the storage sections quickly.

The multimodality, or intermodality, or combined transport then consist in using two or several of transport for the carriage of goods grouped in units of load. Indeed, the transfer of a means of transport to another can be carried out without dissociation of the unit of load (container) of the place of forwarding instead of destination thanks to a suitable material : powerful gantries, straddle loaders...

Among the techniques used in multimode transport, containerization again played a very important part in the development of the intermodal technique: the containers are a solution under development for the problem of the breaking bulks, they are interchangeable of a means of transport with another and thus support the development of the logistics which requires the complementarity of all the means of transport for a better effectiveness but also the reduction of the costs of transshipment by the simplification and the acceleration of the operations of handling.

Within the framework of an intermodal transport, one distinguishes three phases :

The UTI constitute the common denominator to the whole of the means of transport. Each actor of the intermodal chain must obligatorily obtain specific equipment allowing to convey the UTI.

Thus, attraction is maximum if to qualities of accessibility and service road is added the harbor effectiveness. In the choice of the chargers and ship-owners, the facilities of transshipment, the least significant rupture of the logistic chain are indeed increasingly decisive. The ports thus seek to become competitive intermodal centers with very powerful integrated terminals. The most efficient techniques are put at the service of the objectives of speed, capacity and reliability.

The research of compatibility between modes or techniques of transport was an important objective to improve the cost ratio/effectiveness and to increase the productivity : such is the direction of the containerization of the carriage of goods. For the companies, the cost of transport is an element of competitiveness of the products and the control of the chain, a means of following a policy of penetration or control of the markets.

Super the container ships thus serve only the final installations of great scale profiting from important terrestrial infrastructures to convey the containers in the back-country.

The multimodality thus appears as an element determining in the competition that large Europeans deliver themselves to attract the containers.

The two large ports of the Benelux countries melt their activities in a very broad measurement on the transshipment. In Rotterdam, the proportion of containers being the subject of a transshipment is 50%, in Antwerp of 55%. The importance of the transshipment attests the impact which they exert one and the other on the choice of the large maritime operators.

To treat the traffic of containers which increases on average by 8% per annum to Europe, the great harbor establishments arrange vast specialized terminals. The majority of the European harbor places have projects of development and adjustment of their infrastructures, in Hamburg as in Rotterdam with Maasvlakte and Le Havre with Port 2000.

Planted in front of the Atlantic, this seaport out of deep water is not affected by the tides. All the ports do not have this chance. With about fifteen meters of depth, plus seven meters of marling, Le Havre can receive the gigantic container ships which present a draft of 14 meters. Le Havre is the only port, for the moment, with being able to receive from the 6000 EVP, with Rotterdam and this, unconstrained of chenalage nor of crossing of lock. There the armaments have the certainty of always being able to use their ships with full load. The future reception of units of 8000 EVP should not pose problem either : they are hardly inserted more ; the increase in capacity is obtained by a greater width. The port also profits from its geographical situation of 1st port touched with the importation and the last to export at only 15 hours of navigation of the Atlantic.

Since 1986, the port of Le Havre entered a new phase of prosperity and in fact today the various goods hoist it with the row of the first European ports and make of it the first French port for the traffic containerized with 50% of the national traffic.

The port has for the importers and exporters of infrastructures reception allowing them all the logistic functions (storage, packing, conditioning...).

Le Havre has near its four km quay, of 150 hectares storage, 8 hangars adding up 88.000 m ², 13 gantries of 40 tons, 7 railway gantries of 42 tons.

The competitiveness of the port was obtained following the legislative reform of handling : the port saw its prices dropping, the expenses of loading and of unloading to the container terminals were reduced.

Certain indicators make it possible to estimate the weight of the port of Le Havre in regional economic dynamics : the harbor activity generates an economic flow estimated at 800 million francs, the added value generated by the port and the harbor community is estimated at 2 billion francs and the port brings approximately 500 million francs to the Seine Maritime.

Today, the development of the port of Le Havre lies within the scope of a regional development.

In front of the need for having a harbor community more welded to face competition, association Port Alliance was created in 1986 with the support which been able Port authority. Alliance port, whose role is to promote the harbor place on the level national and international gathers :

Le Havre accounts for 7,5% of the shares of the market of the containers of Arranges the North-West (5th position but share of market which progresses most quickly). The objective for the port is to reach the 10%.

The Norman port profited from the abundance of the energy vracs which weighed 46,6 million tons including 37 of the crude oil, 5,2 of refined products and 3,9 of coal...

Within the framework of a total growth with two digits, the Native of Le Havre also established a new record as regards traffic of the containers with 1,32 million EVP, that is to say approximately 60%du total specific traffic of the ports of the Hexagon.

Among the 66,9 million tons tariffed by the port of Le Havre in 1998 (including 16 million tons of various goods), more half (52% of the tonnage registered) relates to combined transport.

The project answers a stake of size, which does not relate to only the place havraise and its employment, but the very whole French economy.

Indeed, how to indeed remain indifferent to the fate of the harbor tool of the Hexagon, whereas the traffics lost with the profit of Antwerp and Rotterdam would mean in the long run delocalizations and dependence increased with respect to foreign logistic chains ?

Let us recall that the harbor stake conferred on the port of Le Havre answers an economic strategy with a future very important : the States of the European Union will lose their economic specificity and will unify as regards tax policy, monetary and budgetary, that the people, the capital and the services will be increasingly mobile and will feel less the borders. Then, more and more, the good equipment in infrastructures of a country will become an economic asset even more important, bus with the macro-economic effect revealing the space externalities will be added the effect of preferential localization compared to the other countries. Thus, in a Community world from which the rules of operation will escape the States more and more, the policy of infrastructures is likely to become one of the rare weapons of which they can lay out with their liking, and who will all the more be of for them interest which it is effective.

The project Port 2000 thus materializes the ambition of the harbor community havraise to see to fit in the estuary of the Seine the equipment making it possible to accommodate and treat the largest container ships and to fix the stopovers durably of them. The stake is serious for the door « océane » but also for France which needs harbor places of international scale, able to integrate the Community requirements and the world challenges. Because the current evolution of the goods traffic in Le Havre in constant progression amplifies the urgent need for Port 2000. With the 1.320.000 EVP which were treated there in 1998, the port of Le Havre is located honourably on the European chess-board. In 1998, the traffic of the containers is in increase of 11,2%, growth definitely higher than those of Antwerp and Rotterdam.

There is thus urgency, at the current rate of the growth of the container activity in Le Havre, the saturation of the infrastructures threatens.

3.700.000 EVP is indétronable. On the other hand, Le Havre - which passed the million containers since 1996 - wants to try to position vis-a-vis Antwerp and Hamburg in order to attract on its quays the massification of flows of containers. Massifier is the Master word of the step, that the containers come by ground or sea, and for fidéliser the customers armateuriale.

However, the other European harbor places do not remain the weapon with the foot. Efforts are made both in Rotterdam and in Antwerp, to accelerate the number of revolutions of the ships and the flow of freight in the back-country, with public equipments by far higher than what they can be in the Hexagon. In France, the investments of the harbor establishments are mainly financed by their own receipts. Thus the project Port 2000 of an eminently national stake was emitted by the community harbor itself and transmitted to the Ministry for Transport. The investigation of public utility is envisaged at the end of 1999 and the decision of the Ministry for Transport awaited in the tread, at the beginning of year 2000.

Cost of the operation : 3,1 billion francs with the startup of the first section since 2002 to avoid saturation.

Why Port 2000 ?

Initially, the harbor activity and the dependant industrial activities represent today 30%des employment in the basin of uses of the Harbor. The containers, with 20% from tonnages and 40% of the stopovers, are the principal generator of harbor employment.

The reception of the ships, handling, the activities of storage/handling and the transport of containers employ approximately 8000 people out of the 13000 occupied ones in the harbor and logistic professions.

Port 2000 answers the globalisation of the economy, the growth of the international trade and the massification of transport by increasing its capacities of reception and treatment. Then, by exploiting its geographical situation- first port touched at the entry of the continent, last port touched at exit, on its nautical accesses, Port 2000, Le Havre can hope to assert a major place in the restricted circle of the large European ports.

As elsewhere in Europe, the Le Havre-native terminals were installed the ones after the others progressively with the needs. They were built between 1968 and 1994 ; 4 of them are established, at a rate of two each times, in the north and the south of the tidal dock ; two others are behind the François lock 1st. This dispersion limits the productivity both for their operation their terrestrial service roads. The length and the provision of the quays always do not allow an optimal positioning of the ships. The quay levels in shrinking of the quays prove to be insufficient, in any case not deep enough.

The five container terminals of the Norman port are disseminated in several points, which lengthens the time of handling and formation of the trains, which all must pass by sorting native of Le Havre of Soquence. However, the building site of Soquence inherits a design which goes back to 1925, directed full west (towards the outer harbor), whereas the harbor activities moved, since this time towards the south and is (the industrial park). From where an obligatory graining and a limitation length of the convoys to that of the ways, 700 meters to the maximum. Today, between the loading of a container on a harbor terminal and its forwarding since Soquence, it is necessary to count up to 10 hours of time. Structural and organisational evolutions are thus necessary.

By an optimal use of spaces available, the restructuring of certain quay levels, the reconfiguration of certain gantries, the installation of connections in exclusive right of way between terminals, Le Havre knew up to now to mitigate these disadvantages and to accompany the evolution by the traffics. The tools will be reinforced soon by the acquisition of two gantries overpanamax. However, these measurements proves to be insufficient to answer the request, saturation threatening.

The recent evolution of the traffics pushed the port to consider a complete reorganization of its infrastructures to face the intensification of the international exchanges. New capacities will be thus necessary to answer the growth of the traffics, powerful and concentrated capacities.

With terminals concentrated on the same site, ordered well and connected well to the terrestrial service roads, the service as well with the ship as with the goods will be able only there to gain. Times of stopover could be reduced, the costs also by avoiding many transfers of limp of an installation to another. With the key, very significant savings in handling and savings of time from two to three hours on the forwarding of a container, which is far from being negligible for a forwarding agent or a charger.

In addition to the functional reorganization of the port, enlarging of the capacities of reception of the ships and the adequate supply of the material, the increase awaited on each terrestrial mode forces to develop for the three modes of powerful installations in terms of capacity and competitiveness for the access and the service road of the terminals. The railway infrastructures will be thus in the vicinity immediate of the terminals and will allow the constitution of complete trains being able to gain the national network directly. The terminals themselves will be concentrated, forming an uninterrupted succession of stations with quay with the ground full contiguous.

In the space located at the south of the wet dock of the Ocean, new river, railway and road infrastructures will be carried out in the vicinity immediate of the quays.

The studies of the project Port 2000 integrate the railway service road of the new terminals which are considered there. It is envisaged, in particular, to create a large single railway building site there, facilitating the constitution and the fast evacuation of the complete trains directly being able to join the national shoed network.

For the river one, the direct passage in the current southern dam would make it possible the river barges to serve directly the quays (river dedicated terminal). The road service road of the terminals should also be improved.

Objective of the PAH : 12 km of quays for container ships in 2050 with in first phase the installation of an initial quay of 700 meters length and 35 hectares of quay levels and in second phase one 2nd 700 meters length quay. The two joined together quays would make it possible to treat 700.000 additional EVP per annum.

The logic of the massification thus forces the harbor authorities to develop their infrastructures of reception and treatment of the ships, but also of new service roads close to the new terminals to quickly evacuate freight in the hinterland.

Indeed, to face European competition and to propose with the French and European customers an alternative in Antwerp and Rotterdam, Le Havre needs absolutely, in addition to Port 2000, of powerful terrestrial connections for the pre one and post-routing of the goods. Port 2000 will be nothing without adequate logistics, without competitive handling, and especially, without effective terrestrial service road, because it is one of the major conditions of the widening of the door « océane ».

Thus the Port authority of Le Havre supports a project of installation of a powerful railway line in terms of cost and speed, dedicated to the freight, which would enable him to extend its surface of distribution and its influence on the back European country.

However one can wonder why the railway means of transport causes to you it thus today a keen interest whereas the port and the State always supported until at the time the road service road ? Which are the assets of iron compared to the other means of transport ?

II. THE TERRESTRIAL SERVICE ROAD OF THE BACK-COUNTRY : THE ROLE OF THE RAILROAD

The European ports are engaged today in a race with the gigantism requiring of good systems of surface transport in order to quickly evacuate the zones of concentration and storage of the goods near the ports. The role of the surface transports in the service road of the back-country is thus considerable. Their capacity and their extent will be factor of competitiveness for the port which they serve. In this context, the port of Le Havre must optimize its existing ground networks, and in particular develop the potentialities of the railway mode.

A. Importance of the hinterland

Modal shares in the pre ones and post-routings of the port of Le Havre in 1997
ROAD	866.000 EVP	73,1%	82,5%
IRON	166.000 EVP	14%	16%
RIVER	16.000 EVP	1,4%	1,5%
SEA (feedering)	136.000 EVP	11,5%

This on a smaller scale was than Antwerp and Rotterdam, Le Havre with the chance to be able to play the chart of the tri method road/river iron/. Indeed, Le Havre has in addition to modes truck driver and railway a river service road by the Seine going up the river until the Paris area, principal distribution center of the port. Shipping allows, one knows it, of the economies of scale, an advantageous transshipment, interesting temporary storage capacities. Thus, the ports located at the mouth of a navigable or suitable river, like Le Havre, are privileged.

However, the terrestrial traffic of maritime containers in the Le Havre-native back-country is primarily carried out by road way. The terrestrial traffic is divided besides only between the road for 82,5% in 1997 and the rail for 16%. The water way at most does not carry out 1,5% of pre and terrestrial post-routings of containers, thanks to the launching of regular between Le Havre and Gennevilliers in the north of Paris by the GIE Logiseine.

The road thus remains the basic element for the pre one and post-routing. It assumes nearly 83% of the traffic with some 250 companies which carry out more than 5000 movements per day. The proximity of the Paris area, 1st market of Le Havre, the anteriority of the truck in transport of approach and bursting and the asset of the road mode in the operation of the companies in tended flows explain this preponderance. The road transport has, these last decades, concentrated the main part of the investments public and thus made remarkable great strides. The flexibility of the road alignment allows convey which uses it to reach any geographical point almost, it is quasi-ubiquity (P. Merlin). The road transport is the only means of transport to being able to ensure of the services carries to door, it is very powerful and very profitable on short distances inexpensive bus.

For the road conveyers, the activity of traction of containers is primarily a regional activity since :

Lastly, 10 to 15% of the terrestrial movements concern harbor brouettage, i.e. the road transport intended for the agglomeration havraise and asserted by handling docker.

The maintenance of the competitiveness of the road offer supposes however that the infrastructures, gauge interconnection are still improved. The highly developed NORTH-SOUTH axes (A1 and A6), with the detriment of western axes/is do not offer solutions to the port of Le Havre. Worse, it is an unhoped-for gift with the ports of the Benelux countries, which forward thus more easily by France and on the natural hinterland native of Le Havre «scrapes thus». To contribute to the development of the port of Le Havre, it would thus be advisable to consolidate the road terrestrial service road of its hinterland.

After progress of these last years (whose startup of the Bridge of Normandy) and improvements nearest towards Amiens/St Quentin on a side, Caen/Rennes of the other, new axes of penetration will have imperatively to follow : it is the case of A28 Rouen/Alençon and the connection between A29 and A28 in order to remove discontinuity existing between the Bridge of Normandy and the axis Calais/Bayonne. But the native of Le Havre is especially petitioning of an axis of skirting of the Paris area ; it goes there from the recovery of the traffics of the east of France which rocked towards Antwerp and Rotterdam. The setting with 2x2 ways of the RN31 Rouen/Rheims would contribute to it. In the same way, the improvement of the RN154 with 2x2 ways between A13 (Louviers) and A10 (Orleans)- axis Rouen/Chartres/Orleans would allow the southern skirting of the Paris area in direction of south-west, of the valley of the Rhone and the south-east of France.

However, the native of Le Havre notes the delays taken in the installation of the most important sections : the road of the estuaries- large by-pass going from Dunkirk to Bordeaux took two of delay, great skirting by Amiens/St Quentin/Rheims will be brought into service only in 2003.

Railway side, the offer of transport is less important. 16% of the traffic of containers were treated by the railway mode in 1998, the railway share of market should reach 20% in 2005.

It is necessary to note however that iron because of its high cost is profitable only on long distances, its participation is high in the traffics of terrestrial contribution since the most distant areas. The consistency of its contribution brought to the structuring of the hinterland of the port of Le Havre is thus compressed, the Island of France and the Upper Normandy- the principal distribution centers of the port thus remaining in the field of the road which on short distances is most advantageous by far. The pre market and railway post-routing of the containers in Le Havre in 1997, large war-horse of the Norman port, in a context of permanent change due to the adjustments of the strategies armateuriales increased only by 4% while the total number of limp handled on the quays carried out a historical jump of 17,4%.

The railway mode represents nevertheless a surface transport with a future making it possible to widen the market of the hinterland of Le Havre towards the international one.

What applies to the road is also valid for the railway service road : Le Havre is petitioning above all a large railway axis on Amiens, Rheims and Chalons out of Champagne which would allow, always by avoiding the Paris area, to serve is France, the Central and Eastern Europe, Switzerland and would facilitate the access to the Italian and Spanish markets. The port native of Le Havre would thus wish that be concretized the inscription of this axis to the diagram transeuropéen of combined transport, which implies its inscription with the national directing diagram as a preliminary.

The CNC, subsidiary of the SNCF, operator of combined transport, manages terminals and a fleet of specialized coaches. More directed towards the chargers, it proposes complete services of door with door, possibly including the supply of the containers.

The CNC proposes starting from the Harbor the service road of 45 final building sites in less 24H by the network « COMBI 24 » which connects all French agencies CNC thanks to a system based on the nodal point of Villeneuve St George and a hundred terminals in Europe.

Each day, of the service roads by trains blocks are ensured by the department « Naviland European Services " of the CNC, on the principal destinations of the Hexagon, of England, of the Benelux countries, of Italy, of Spain, of Germany and Portugal.

Building site CNC in Soquence Le Havre known as « The Harbor-Combi » consists of a platform of 8000m ² in roadway reinforced for an exploitation with monopiece mobile cranes. It has two 350 meters length ways which can accommodate each one 17 S60 coaches. The annual average activity of this terminal is 12000 mobile cases at the beginning and 6000 on arrival, primarily of continental origin. The building site is equipped with important means for the handling of the containers and the mobile cases (gantries of 40 tons, automobile cranes, elevators), with road sets thanks to a network of conveyers specialized for the connections between the building site and the places of production as well as quay levels to store the containers, vacuums or full.

ICF, arranges supranational commune with the whole of the European companies of railroad (kind of co-operative of networks), ensures since 1967 by means of trains blocks international massive transport of containers or mobile cases, and in particular the approach or the railway evacuation of containers forwarding by the seaports since or towards some 650 European terminals, via its network « Quality Net » serving the principal industrial centers in Europe thanks to a system of hub in Metz/Fine sand. This makes of it the 1st operator of transport combined in Europe.

ICF does not market that services of door with door. In 1997, ICF transported 1,3 million EVP.

The representation of Inter Container Inter Refrigerator is ensured in France by the SNCF (CNC) and of the local agencies as the Logistique company Carries Océane (LPO) installed in Le Havre since the beginning of 1998 which deal with all the operations of the rail-bound transport (organization of the loadings, establishment of the contracts of carriage...).

3 departures and 3 arrivals per week are proposed in Le Havre by the network Quality Net of ICF.

One can also mention the existence of the operator of transport combined rail/Novatrans road which carries out rail-bound transports of semitrailers not accompanied by the technique by the Piggyback traffic, of mobile cases and containers.

Since Le Havre, Novatrans offers daily services towards Italy (Novara) and 3 times per week for Perpignan serving Spain.

The offer of transport is however not, because of the increase of the frequencies and the massification of the traffics, rather high. The harbor authorities havraises thus claim étoffement services offered by the railway operators and the development of powerful additional infrastructures suitable for appreciably increase the rail-bound offer of transport in Le Havre.

Cheaper than the rail, the water way specializes more and more in the carriage of standardized goods conditioned in units of load on relations on which regular convoys of containers are organized : it is the case of the line Le Havre/Gennevilliers exploited by the GIE Logiseine.

The water way can also contribute to the massification of the traffic container. Even if the starting of the line Le Havre/Gennevilliers were slow, it goes up in power. Started from 0 in 1994, Logiseine evolves/moves at present on a rate of 12.000 EVP per annum in source or bound for Paris-Terminal SA, which manages the multimode terminal of the wearing of Paris Gennevilliers (of which the Port authority of Le Havre took a participation in the capital in order to give its support for the transport combined of containers on the Seine). Three departures are proposed each week, with convoys of approximately 200 EVP, with the forwarding agents and the beginning of Gennevilliers.

The river profession, on the Seine and elsewhere, thus redeployed its offer in direction of freight with strong added value, in addition to materials traditionally transported such as the petroleum products and chemical, the agricultural produce and food and building materials or coal.

The water way is of space interest more limited but it is means of a sure and economic transport for weighty the nonperishable ones, in particular the solid vracs and liquids, and the containers, of the products not requiring fast deliveries because of the slowness of transport : 12 km/h of average without the stops with the locks.

However, the share of the river mode in the service road of the hinterland native of Le Havre is very weak, hardly 2% against 50% for Antwerp and 55% (700 000 EVP per annum on the Rhine) for Rotterdam which profit from direct relations with the heart of Europe.

If Le Havre is if little served by the river transport, it is initially because the network of the French inland waterways is only one dead end. The river service road of Le Havre is indeed limited to the Paris area. None the French ports is connected to a river system large gauge at long distances serving the great European continental economic centers.

However, the harbor authorities of Le Havre, Port authority of Paris and Logiseine are linked to develop the water way, which can, it also to contribute to the massification of the service road of the back-country even if this one is limited to the Paris area. Whereas the railway approach of Paris ridges on many problems, it would be reproachable to be deprived of the potential which represents the water way which makes it possible to return the containers to the doors even of the capital. This is why the diagram of installation of Port 2000 includes/understands the opening in the current southern dam of the port native of Le Havre would allow the river units coming from the tidal dock to directly gain the future quays. In addition, a terminal dedicated to river could take seat in the wet dock of the ocean. A system of brouettage in exclusive right of way would connect to the terminals of Port 2000. But the high cost of these installations caused in the public authorities of many reserves which would bring the restriction of the project on certain points and in particular the dam of protection appreciably less long which would allow a saving in 250 million francs but would lead on the abandonment of a direct service road of the future terminals by the inland navigation.

One estimates according to all these factors that the river could adapt all the same 3% of terrestrial flows by 2005.

C. A new context favourable with the development of the rail-bound transport

The service road of the Le Havre-native back-countries is dominated, one saw it, by the road mode which took a dominating place in a logistic context of flows tended on the short ones and average distances. A thing is however certain, the option any road appears less and less bearable economically, socially and ecologically with the industrialists chargers, the public and the policies. After having channeled, taking into account its flexibility and of the immediate economic repercussions, the greatest part of the investments as regards infrastructure, the increase in the road infrastructures is more possible only in one limited measurement, as well for reasons of space saturation as for environmental contingencies.

The road transport actually was the symbol of development of the period of strong economic growth according to war (« Thirty Glorious ») marked by a change of the industrial modes of production : the tangible properties (product finished and semi-finished) took the place of metallurgical heavy industry. The European States largely centered their plans of regional planning on the use of the road axes to serve urbanized spaces and to connect between them the great industrial centers. In France, the Delegation with the Regional planning and the Regional Action (DATAR) a long time considered and used the road transport like the privileged tool of the development of the regional territories. The policy of « any truck driver » was employed a long time. During this time, the rail-bound transport knew a reduction generalized of its networks towards the most important axes and most profitable. Today, the road occupies a situation of monopoly on European transport of goods which was that of the railroads with 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1995, the road transported 72% of the freight of the European Union.

Between 1970 and 1995, the market of European transport increased by 70%. The share of market of the rail-bound transport in Europe on the other hand passed from 32% to less than 16%. It is the road which profited in priority from this strong growth. According to the European authorities and if no measurement were taken to stop the monopolistic situation of the road transport aiming at rebalancing the modal shares of European transport, the share of the railway mode would pass from 16 to 9% in the next years whereas one can expect a growth of the freight of 30%.

After the decline of the railway mode in the modal share of transport in Europe and the protectionism of the networks of the Member States, the European Commission made several provisions aiming at developing iron at the European level, the great potentialities on long distances- field of predilection of iron, the short ones and average distances being the prerogative of the road mode.

The governments gave to iron a dominating role in the defense of national space, these same railway national spaces which caused at the European level of many dysfunctions which caused the retreat of the rail with respect to the road. The States undergo budgetary constraints which weigh increasingly heavy and which, in the long term, will return the situation of the insupportable railroads. If nothing is done, this situation would emerge with a massive rationalization of the networks, i.e. that the networks would be reduced to some large axes. It is necessary, consequently, to set up a drastic treatment so that the rail reappears. The single solution so that the railroads reappear is to continue the liberalization started by the European directives. Because only liberalization can save the rail. The wish of the European Commission is to manage to make the mode railway as interesting as the other means of transport, on a European scale. For that, the rail-bound transport must open with the free competition.

Since January 1, 1993, the borders of the Member States of the European Union were abolished. Europe entered the single market. From now on thus, the scale of transport is European, it is not theoretically more tributary of the borders which blocked a homogeneous economic development thanks to transport ? The intracommunity international exchanges consequently, with the opening of the borders, literally exploded : the experts thus envisage for the next years a growth of European freight of about 30%.

In June 1993, the Twelve members of the EU charged French J. Delors, the president of the Commission, to reflect on the policies to carry out in order to leave the economic crisis which Europe at this period undergoes. Mr. Delors then presents his reflections at the time of the Council European of Brussels de Décembre 1993 pennies the shape of a White Paper entitled « Growth, Competitiveness, Employment. Challenges and tracks to enter the 21e century » which preaches the installation of a policy of great work of infrastructures in the transport sector taking part in the economic development of Europe.

According to the orientations of the White Paper, the European Union supports then, in the framework of the Common Market, the liberalization of the whole of the means of transport in order to reach a durable and homogeneous mobility on the European territory, and this, particularly at the railway level whose national monopolies prevent the opening of the networks and thus the development of the transnational intra-Community trade by railway way which however has large potentials. For déréglementer the rail-bound transport and to propose an alternative to the road and to thus attenuate European imbalance modal, the European Commission founded the directive 91/440 which goes in the direction of the liberalization of the European railroads.

This directive relates to two principal aspects, namely management of the railway companies and the access to the infrastructure. In short, the Directive imposes countable separation between the railway company and the manager of infrastructure. The railway company becomes any operator of transport and the infrastructure is opened with competition for any operator of transport which would like to borrow it.

The railway operators, very often national, must be equipped with a statute of independence with respect to the State, and are constrained, consequently, to reach obligatory financial balance for the operation of very undertaken (« deprived »).

In France, the authorities set up the strict application of Directive 91/440 : they separated the infrastructure from the exploitation.

Shoed network of France (RF) is created the 13/12/97 to manage the French rail network. However, this new publicly-owned establishment remained very related to the SNCF.

If the European Commission imposes on the Member States of such resolutions in the railway field, it is that the latter A a role to be played prevalent in transport in Europe and seems an outlet with the enormous potential in the routing of the goods.

The road transport, principal mode employed in Europe has serious problems. The road causes initially harmful effects : pollution air, sound and visual which is less and less tolerated by the company. The European major roads know then today chronic problems of saturation, the roads on are used and the often blocked accesses of the great agglomerations, whereas the potentialities of the other means of transport like the railroad and the water way under are exploited.

This is why the European Commission founded Directive 91/440 in order to « to break » the national monopolies which, by managing and protecting the national interior traffics, blocked the European railway potential.

Because the rail is gravitational with respect to the road for massive transport at long distances : it can admit great quantities of goods without increase proportional in the expenses. The major asset of the railroad resides indeed in the transport of heavy loads (up to 3000 tons) on long distances, with a power consumption and a cost of transport (if the traffic is bulky) moderate.

The cost of transport is an essential criterion in the modal split of the chargers, the owners of the transported goods. This one breaks up into two terms : fixed, independent of the distance, and proportional to the distance covered. The railway mode is characterized by a cost fixes higher than the road and a kilometric cost lower than that of its competitor. It results from it that the rail-bound transport is more profitable than the road on the long distances and, conversely that the road mode is at coulters and average distances. Iron is thus factor of widening of the market.

It is necessary also that the traffics massive and are balanced, i.e. that they make it possible to fill several trains, in the two directions and with a sufficient frequency. The rail links are thus carried out between important economic zones generating much freight.

Railway mode present in more one energy effectiveness up to three times higher than that of the road transport which makes it possible to reduce the costs appreciably, especially on long distances.

Another of the principal assets of the railway mode is thus its capacity to treat important traffics, on the same axis of transport. The traffic by complete trains is effective on « segments » quite precise relating to not very desirable bulky flows on the road. Trains of 1200 or 1500 tons of payload are common. Vis-a-vis the competition of the road and plane, the revival of the rail passes however by the increase speed and capacity. New material of circulation and a co-operation between the national networks making it possible to reduce waitings to the borders is here necessary.

As for the other means of transport, the transport capacity is closely related to the fluidity of the traffic (a number of ways, slope, radii of curvature, mode of traction).

The rail is also adapted to the new tendency of polarization of the territories and to the concentration of flows on less and less many but increasingly heavy axes. The double policy of the rail which has as an orientation the removal of the lines considered to be too not very profitable and the maintenance, to see the reinforcement of the service road on the large axes accompanies this evolution.

The rise of the maritime intercontinental exchanges in addition requires future transport modes allowing the massification of the containerized routings of freight. This tendency opens new outlets with the rail-bound transports because the ports are generating of railway freight.

The professionals of the rail-bound transport know it well, today the shippers think in term of intermodality, of complementarity when they should imagine the routing of their freight. Transport plays from now on an important part in world trade, it represents the challenges of the 21e century in term of post-routing of the once unloaded goods with quay and the place which the rail can and must take in these surface transports. Because the ports know that in the future, the characteristics of the rail-bound transport will be essential to the flow of the flows of goods massifiés coming from the super door containers.

The research of a productivity increased for this large equipment leads their promoters then to integrate from the start the railway tool necessary to their strategy of massification of pre and terrestrial post-routings of limp.

But on this market, competition became and will remain wild between the various involved modes and the requirements of the chargers and ship-owners exert all on the level of the cost that to that of the quality of service. In this field, the road remains very competitive.

In addition to the fact that the rail-bound transport can be under certain conditions more competitive than the road and to be substitutable with this one, the rail can also be the complement of the road mode : the increase in the frequentation of the railway highways with large volumes can reduce the congestion of the road highways and thus optimize for this last quality this service by reducing the transit time and the costs of transport. The two means of transport can also function in synergy : by adding the advantages with the one and other, one can have offering means of transport of the services more interesting and competitive for the chargers. Transport combined rail/road is thus dedicated to a promising future, framed moreover by the European Commission.

The influence on the ground, very important at the cost of the infrastructure as well as visual pollution remains more modest for iron for transported masses potentially more important than the road mode. The impact on the consumption of space is thus less strong than the road, the influence on the ground is approximately six hectares per railway km of line against ten hectares per km of highway.

On the level of the air and sound pollution, iron is there too gravitational. The control of pollution became a major concern for the European countries and the companies, low fuel consumption power of iron, its weak influence on the ground, the reduction of the sound harmful effects and the rejections of pollutants and its great safety make that the carriage of goods per railway way becomes impossible to circumvent.

In short, the rail adapts to the new conditions of the carriage of goods vis-a-vis the road by :

The rail-bound transport is likely all to play one of the key roles for the process of European integration. With the increase envisaged in the carriage of goods in Europe pushed by the massification of the maritime transport, the effectiveness of the rail-bound transport will lie in the optimization of the speed and of its transport capacities within a broader geographical framework, on the continental scale and an alternative effective and more powerful than the road mode could be thus proposed.

The European authorities consider with the introduction of the European directives the solution of the rail a such element of integration to strong capacity. European economic integration lengthens the distances from the exchanges : under these conditions, iron finds decisive advantages on the other means of transport. This is capital, provided that integration, the opening of the national networks is concretized shortly and that the infrastructures are improved.

To involve this Community integration, the harbor communities which misent on a rail-bound transport « liberal » stimulate the implementation of services by shuttles on the principal centers of production and consumption of a hinterland which they embrace on a European scale. An interministerial decree of the 15/03/99 thus authorized in France the Port authority of Le Havre to take a participation in the capital of the company promotionnant the circulation of trains blocks per direct connection called Le Havre Shuttles (LHS).

D. Shuttles

The technical and commercial optimization of the railway offer appears as a priority for the native of Le Havre which judges that the railway offer in Le Havre is not sufficient on behalf of the operators present.

Thus, Port authority of Le Havre works for the installation of lines dedicated freight in order to optimize the offer and to offer a product which is in competition, in price, reliability and time, the leitmotiv being always the same one : massifier. To answer the request increasing for terrestrial service road and in particular for rail-bound transport of the customers havraise, it is necessary to stimulate competition between the railway operators in order to cause a drop in the prices of the transport of pre or post-routings terrestrial.

The PAH thus proposes to replace gradually and for relevant relations by their volume of traffic, the trains directed systematically towards the nodal point by a system of given rhythm shuttles since the volume of traffic generated by a given area justifies a direct circulation.

The wearing of Antwerp and Rotterdam largely based the railway service road of their hinterland on the installation of such shuttles.

The market demand east to obtain a daily removal at a competitive cost. The response of the offer is to propose a daily service and a massification of the routing.

The technique of the nodal point which is not specifically railway, is the consolidation of the traffics via a central platform.

The technique of the shuttle is the full employment of two oars of materials in going/return between two points.

The passage by the nodal point implies that the schedules of the trains are dependant on the phase of consolidation which lasts a few hours all the same and generates costs of operation. The implementation of a shuttle implies that each day the relation provides in the two directions the food necessary to financial balance.

These two procedures are different but they are not opposite. Both are instruments of distribution, one fascinating support on the economy as a whole, the other fascinating support on the saving in only one axis. They are sometimes even complementary bus not badly of shuttles are bound for nodal points or rather of centers of correspondence.

The PAH, in partnership with the operators CNC, ICF or Novatrans wishes to deepen its hinterland by the multiplication of such shuttles, dedicated to the containers between Le Havre and some destinations chosen, in particular in direction of the east and the south-east of France.

The response of the place of Le Havre has as a name « Shuttles Le Havre » (LHS), limited company with statute of commission agent, (kind of co-operative of purchase which buys of capacity with the CNC), marketing rail-bound transport, while having bought railway shuttles as a preliminary operating on long distances or more simply from « slots ». The services will be then resold directly by LHS with the customers.

The UMEP is currently the principal shareholder of LHS. The trade associations were solicited just as the private companies. In the round table also the PAH for 34% of the capital appears.

The PAH already set up of such services by supporting the financial risk lasting the time of the rise in load of the services :

To serve North - Pas-de-Calais and to set up a network of interregional traffics, Le Havre and the river port of Lille (this last is a commission agent) are connected on line by a train block ICF, with a rotation per week.

As an indication, the price of the rail-bound transport in each direction (except handling) for a full container or vacuum is 650 francs for one 20 ', of 800 francs for one 40 '. They were there conditions a priori gravitational, but the distance is too short to make it possible iron to really play its part. More especially as the prices of production seem more interesting beyond the border, i.e. on the Belgian network and its prolongations.

However, the area inhabitant of Lille close to the port of Le Havre, is the 2nd import-export area of France after the Island of France. The stake is thus of size. The PAH wishes thus, thanks to this line, to make rock the traffics of Antwerp towards Le Havre by emphasizing the geographical situation of the Norman port of 1st port touched at the importation and the last at export. Le Havre thus seeks to conquer new markets by competing with the services of the Belgian port on its hinterland.

The other major factor of attraction of the traffics is obviously the cost of transport. The purpose of the shuttles are to minimize the costs and times of transport, to make more competitive the offer with respect to the competitor ports and to generate consequently more important volumes and to conquer shares of market.

The purpose of the shuttle Le Havre/Lille is thus to compete with the offer of river transport and fluvio-maritime at the beginning of the port river of Lille and directed towards Antwerp and Rotterdam. The cost of transport of a container on this axis (650 francs) is nevertheless still too high to be able to compete with the services of the ports of north.

Created in partnership with the CNC in the form of a triweekly service since 1996, in reaction to a project of installation of a shuttle Lyon/Rotterdam by the private operator European European Rail Shuttles (ERS), the direct railway shuttle enters the terminals of the port and the platform of the CNC with Vénissieux connected to the principal economic centers of the south-east of Europe, made it possible to reduce the delivery periods of approximately 20 hours.

This shuttle is a real success : 50.000 EVP were transported since its launching. The CNC playing the game of the massification, the prices could be appreciably lowered (up to 30%).

Strasbourg and its area constitute another layer of traffic coveted by the native of Le Havre, but however dominated by the offer of the wearing of Antwerp and Rotterdam.

Since January 1998, a shuttle of a capacity of 80 EVP circulates with three to go/return per week between the Le Havre-native terminals and the railway building site of the CNC to Cronenbourg, connected to the principal economic centers of the European east. Competition obliges, the prices charged are more or less aligned on those of the Rhine. Even if there remains a light difference, this shuttle allures by a shorter transit time.

The product goes up in power with 600 EVP per month, which is all the more appreciated on the place havraise that it had undergone full whip the competition of the containerized services of the Rhine.

LHS intends to exploit later on into clean the shuttle on Strasbourg, while putting in competition CNC and ICF in order to still minimize costs and to become even more competitive on the offer of surface transport.

Extremely success of these first experiments, and particularly of the shuttle on Lyon, the PAH wishes to develop this type of service road and to offer a pallet widened of destinations through Europe by trains shuttles.

The organization of these shuttles and their marketing will be the fact of an operational structure, in the course of constitution at the instigation of PAH, and in which the port would be in a majority. Statute of transport commissioner for this operation, the structure would negotiate the purchase of trains near the railway owners, would ensure of them marketing and the invoicing near the forwarding agents and armaments.

In the long run, and taking into account the number of non-stop trains that the port estimates to generate, PAH asserts the adjustment of railway routes dedicated to freight and in particular towards the east.

It acted by avoiding the Paris area with which the networks are saturated, arranging the existing ways between Le Havre, Amiens, Rheims, Chalons out of Champagne and Metz.

The release of such a route supposes work of infrastructures and studies of exploitation.

The choice of the railway means of transport in the service road of the hinterland thus appears at present undeniable being given the existing potentialities of this means of transport and the will of the policies to develop this alternative. It is from this point of view and this context that the port of Le Havre eminently wishes to be served by a railway line to benefit from these potentialities, like its European competitors. On the initiative of the port of Le Havre, a project was founded to answer this waiting and to thus make it possible to the first French port to conquer new markets and to consider, with the support of the project « Port 2000 », a more prosperous future.

Which is the nature of this project ? Which are the conditions so that it is carried out and so that it is really effective and profitable ?

III. THE RAILWAY PROJECT OF SKIRTING OF THE PARIS BASIN WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE EUROPEAN CORRIDORS OF FREIGHT

It is thus on the rail that the essence of the competition goes to serve the national and international hinterland. The development of Le Havre will require powerful infrastructures of connections with the east of France as well as the Central Europe and the south, making it possible to avoid a Paris area blocked already well. Knowing that the competition between the seaports will be exploited their capacities to serve the European hinterland on west-east axes, the objective of the port of Le Havre is the creation of a powerful axis towards the east.

The market of the transport of containers is, as we saw, in process of extension and integration. The service road of the hinterland is conceived from now on on a continental scale, European and the ports must develop their terrestrial service roads in order to reach the great industrial parks and the zones of distribution and conquer shares of market there.

The chart of flows of containers in Europe makes it possible to visualize the routes of flows of distribution of the containers by sea or terrestrial. It reveals several geographical areas of various importances according to the density of the relations. One can see that the field of competition of the large European ports are located in the traditional one « blue banana » (The Benelux countries, Germany ex FRG, Switzerland, Austria, Italy of north) which symbolizes a strong concentration of the dynamic industrial areas of Europe strongly turned towards the international trade.

« blue banana » is a place privileged for the imports and exports largely calling upon the harbor infrastructures and the terrestrial service roads for the routing of freight. This unit forms a closed field where clash the ports majors of north, Antwerp, Hamburg and Rotterdam. The principal handicap of Le Havre compared to its competitors of the North Sea east its relative distance with respect to this economic unit and its close relatively deserted hinterland. If the road is competitive up to 500 km, beyond, nothing is worth iron to fill this geographical handicap and to play in the same court as them « large ».

More than 220 million inhabitants in a space of 1000 km ray around the Harbor 240 million for Rotterdam lies against. The Norman port, with the development of the railway tool, thus has all its chances.

If it is good that the port is connected to a line dedicated to the freight which connects it, beyond Strasbourg, on « blue banana », this prosperous zone of Europe which extends from London in Milan, while passing by Rotterdam and Hamburg, still is necessary it that the final installations on the port ensure an effective sorting and the fast loading of the trains and that those has a sufficiently powerful infrastructure.

In a competing ultra context, France took delay compared to the actions engaged at the terrestrial level in Northern Europe, since the choices of the large armaments depend from now on, mainly, of the railway service roads, those in particular which allow innerver the center of Europe.

Realistic, A. Graillot admits that « the Rhine creates a basic zone pressure » draining on Rotterdam and Antwerp a substantial package of limp in source or bound for Switzerland, of Rhenish France and the south of Germany. But beyond the Rhine, while going more to the east, to Austria or Hungary for example, the port can again be competitive.

Because the field of competition is not restricted any more with traditional « blue banana », a new space which is strongly bound to him, appears, made up of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland... the PECO (Central European country and Eastern) recently open to Western Europe and which are very petitioning of transport and freight. Flows should thus concentrate more and more between the ports and the final platforms of transshipment near these countries whose course will be carried out instinctively by railway.

The progressive economic integration of the PECO in Western Europe are and will be the principal factor of the new organization of flows in Europe. It is under the pressure of the markets that built Europe and under the influence of the evolution of transport.

Under the aegis of the European Commission, group TINA (Transport Infrastructure Needs Assesment group) comes to make proposals for the choice of the axes and points nodal to level or to create in the Central European countries and Eastern in order to ensure the continuity of the networks transeuropéens of transport. These proposals concretely consolidate the emergence of a vast economic area in process of integration fast to the European Union. The seaports thus see there a new outlet ready to reinforce the dimension of their hinterland. There Le Havre sees a formidable advisability to develop its hinterland on a space still saved by terrestrial harbor competition. However, it will be necessary to go quickly because the other ports will not remain a long time the weapon with the foot.

A. The saturation of the Parisian node

The French rail network, as it is known, for historical, geographical and economic reasons is centered on Paris (star of Legrand), just like his road and air counterparts.

The Paris area became for any means of transport, the passage obliged for the goods and the travellers. It is a true hinged plate by which forwards almost all the exchanges.

This is why the Paris area became for the railroad as for the road, increasingly encumbered, the increase in passenger traffics and goods evolving/moving more quickly than the offer of transport.

At the railway level, the trains, goods in particular, borrow to reach the Parisian node or to forward there a railway line normally reserved for freight circumventing the Parisian pole through the outskirts of the city (the Large Belt) serving centers of sorting, building sites of transshipment (transport combined rail/road) and the large national railway axes towards the principal French and foreign regional poles economic.

However, the concentration and the increase in the traffic freight on the Parisian node caused a relative saturation of the Large Belt which cannot answer any more effectively at the request of transport. Important delays, long moments of waiting intervene unceasingly. When one knows the importance of the times of routing and the respect of the latter for the conveyer with respect to the charger, one understands easily that the saturation of the Large Belt poses many problems. The measurement of the railway congestion is directly related to the concept of quality of service felt by the customers. The respect of the schedules constitutes the essential element of quality of service felt by the customers. The respect of the schedules translates the reliability into exploitation of the schedules of the trains designed by the owner and is concretized by an index of regularity. The railway phenomenon of congestion is also characterized by the difficulty (even impossibility) of answering at the request of transport : for example, impossibility of tracing furrows allowing the trains arriving in the agglomerations at the schedules that the market requires it, or the existence low block speeds in spite of materials adapted to high dash speeds.

The railway exploitation is also by unstable and fragile nature, taking into account the absence of deviations in the event of incidents.

Many traffics are concentrated on the most powerful lines which are the electrified lines, at high authorized speed and easy profile, with a strong frequentation.

This report explains also the concentration of the traffic North-South freight on the large Belt.

The investments of capacity of these last years moreover little touched the Large Crown of Paris and little the relations freight whereas the traffics increased (+2% per annum).

To the saturation of the infrastructure by the goods traffic is added the exponential increase in the passenger traffic of suburbs to suburbs which are cruelly lacking in Paris area. Transport inter suburbs of travellers will be reopened by junction of radial between them via certain branches of the RER or by loan of the Large Belt.

In Paris area, freight is the poor relation of the rail-bound transport who circulates at the hours that arrange the owner, i.e. those where there is no passenger traffic. Those will thus take the step on the goods traffics.

The problem is not to however make the Large Belt in itself more powerful, since to arrive there, it is necessary to approach the Paris area. However, located in urban zone, where space misses cruelly, this line can be improved only at one astronomical cost, it will be necessary to take into account the opposition of the residents which will certainly not accept the increase in the harmful effects in their environment. It is obvious that the cost per kilometer will be prohibitory.

On the general need to increase the frequencies and in order to regulate increasingly many conflicts of circulation without Pharaonic investments, a simple conclusion is essential : it is necessary to eliminate from the Paris area all the traffic which does not take place to be namely the through traffic freight.

The shoed network of France is rich many by-passs making it possible to sail round Paris at a distance from 150 to 200 km. These lines, traced well and with double track ensured an important service, especially in the field of freight, the time of the steam traction. Their role decreased in the last decades because of the concentration of the traffic operated on the arteries electrified (for a greater productivity : minimal policy of equipment of the SNCF which caused the folding back on some lines of all the kinds of traffic), so much so that they fell into a quasi-lapse of memory. But they exist and represent a beautiful capital with a very important potential. The solution would be then to defer traffics on these famous by-passs under used after modernization and electrification. The idea would be thus to create a great Paris by-pass (GCP) which would be capable to solve a great number of problems that the routing of freight meets and would make it possible at the same time to give itself the means thanks to an effective infrastructure of conquering markets.

The road of the harbor traffics towards the east thus concerns the rail. However, at a rate of nearly 550000 containers EVP entrusted to iron by 2010 (against 160.000 currently), the service road known as current goes right to saturation. It is envisaged since 2002. In all logic, the project Port 2000 was initially subjected to maritime choices. Very quickly, the glances turned to the interior, insofar as the most powerful ports are generally those where the goods remain the least longest.

The relevance of the railway offer is not measured with the ell of the only quantity. One needs for it also reliability, flexibility, competitiveness. In this respect, the optimum is not reached. Question infrastructure, the in-depth service road of the Le Havre-native back-countries ridges on the Paris by-pass, where the traffics enter in conflict, one saw it inter alia, with the traffics suburbs of the Paris area. Exploitation question, the Native of Le Havre is also petitioning.

If, in the wake of Port 2000, the modal share of iron must pass to 20% then 25, it is necessary that the railway offer follows. The Paris area is not enough to provide the minimal percentage of limp justifying the stopover of a very large PC : that is to say 15% in general of a ship charging 6000 limp for example. To draw from other large consumption and coalfields is consequently a requirement.

State of the infrastructure

Great railway skirting begins in Motteville on the axis Le Havre/Paris, to approximately 60 km in the east of the large Norman port. This junction starts the beginning of a small section with single track, not electrified and used for the local service road. Long of a few tens of kilometers, it joined always more in the east the axis Rouen/Amiens modernized and electrified in 1984 in quality of route (a) with a component freight marked. This axis makes it possible to join the northern axis Paris/with large gauge towards the Channel tunnel, the Lilloise agglomeration and the old Franco-Belgian axis for Metz. L '' route of the GCP leaves Amiens for a directed line full is towards Lorraine. The line Amiens-Tergnier-Laon-Rheims-Trawl-nets out of champagne is a line with double not electrified track requiring work of modernization. It was about a line with double track traced well without structure important to put at the gauge (not tunnels) and of which all the nodes are already under overhead lines (Tergnier and Rheims). In addition and within the preceding framework besides, no new sub-station 25KV, nor feeder high voltage of this one would be to envisage. The existing sub-stations at the point of crossing with the already electrified lines should be enough after reinforcement if one adopts the formula 25KV with auto-transformer. And this more especially as an automatic block with long cantons (spacing of 7/8 mm) should be enough. Rheims/Chalons is besides already team. It should be noted that on this last section, the section ranging between the exchanger with the future TGV existing with height of St Hiliaire to the Temple and Chalons are in any event programmed to be electrified. With this work, one obtains, at a quite less cost and a higher result, an axis freight equipped well avoiding Paris and offering interesting use potential by the grid which it allows with the existing network which would bring the improvement of the rotation of the increase and field-installed machines in the fluidity and the regularity of the routings.

There are however the technological innovations awaited in particular by the port of Le Havre of massification of pre and post-routings which impose costs of installation much higher and many problems of adaptation. It is then all the route which will have to undergo work. Line dedicated to freight, the axis could be authorized with a weight with the axle of 22,5 tons, even 25 tons from here at a few years and where of the trains up to 1500 even 2000 meters could circulate, but that is not simple on the technical level to make roll of the two kilometers long trains.

The line, even if it is not electrified yet, is able to support, with a reinforcement on the ground, long trains while ensuring a good average, i.e. approximately 50 km/h of the departure on arrival. That supposes initially a fine study on the optimization of the furrows and the increase in the capacity (quartering with automatic blocks), essential with the crossing of all the radial lines on Paris. But there are also the trains which require in this case an adapted brake which was not developed yet (the study on the long trains was not carried out yet). Another problem, that of side and the garage tracks of 750 meters which do not suffice obviously for trains twice longer.

The section Motteville-Montérolier Buchy east can be the starting point of the GCP

Connected up on the one hand in Motteville on the axis Le Havre/Paris, to 60 km downstream from the Harbor, and on the other hand to Montérolier, 90 km in the south of Amiens on the axis Amiens-Rouen, the Motteville section/Montérolier is today an element of infrastructure primarily used for the local service road. It makes nevertheless feasible a direct connection of the part swallows the Low Seine, with the networks north and is country, avoiding the passage by the station of Rouen and the junction of Darnétal, route very much used currently. This line represents a major advantage to eliminate the conflicts from circulation of Rouen, for circulations of or towards Amiens. However, the very marginal use of this section by the plans of national transport operations of the SNCF, is explained by the fact why its infrastructure is not electrified, nor homogeneous with the arteries which it is supposed to connect. Its characteristics (not electrified single track with telephone quartering, at speed limited to 70km/h reduced to 40 when the load with the axle reaches 22,5 tons) do not make it possible to ensure a flow of circulations at a level of flexibility and effectiveness compatible with that of the whole of the device used.

Today, the question of the restoration of this line is of topicality because it would make it possible to offer to harbor freight native of Le Havre, the access to a vector of distribution with the reception of technological innovations which would hoist the railway routing on a level of performance compatible with the ambitions of development announced by the harbor site itself.

The section thus offers a direct connection with Amiens and an advisability of sailing round the Island of France in direction of the east and south-east of France but also towards the Central and Eastern Europe. The section would contribute to ensure the railway competitiveness of the Norman port in the European hinterland. And the Amiens route, Tergnier, Chalons out of Champagne can bring a serious alternative to the passage by the Large Belt. In addition to the considerable short cut at the distance Le Havre/Amiens, the modernization and the electrification of weak width, which can be carried out in less than one year, would also make it possible to relieve the node of Rouen and the axis Le Havre/Paris and to release from the additional furrows.

The area Upper Normandy is ready besides to finance this work within the framework of the contracts of plan State/Régions whose cost is estimated at 250 million francs.

Several questions about the credibility of the project arise and their resolution returns sometimes to the characteristics or aptitudes of the route, sometimes with its mode of exploitation. Studies were carried out and define the most relevant types of circulation likely to borrow the route according to a potential traffic to evaluate on the basis of offer of services to determine according to different the scénarii from possible investments, more or less voluntarist as regards public expenditure. According to performances' sought for the route, on the one hand for the level of the exploitation, and on the other hand for the level of the tariff competitiveness of the services offered, it will be advisable to define the levels of required investments, progressive and justified by the economic profitability of the project.

Various characteristics of exploitation to be sought must be examined and their relevance appreciated in the light of their compatibility with the infrastructure and other natures of circulations on the axis :

In parallel, the treatment of some singular points very penalizing in the routing of the trains and the release with the B+ gauge to consider the uses complementary to this route will have to be carried out as well as a programme of regeneration of the ways in order to gradually record the speed of the trains of freight with 100 or 120 km/h.

The total volume of these investments is evaluated to 2,2 billion francs from here 2006.

The results of the studies carried out provide a very precise analysis and very well defined of all the possible scénarii according to the forecasts of traffic of the SNCF and investments' of modernization on great skirting. It would be useless to textually include in this study the results and the assumptions of various work. It however appears interesting conclusions :

because of the importance of the investments of infrastructures, the shoed networks are marked by a great inertia. The profitability of a railway is all the more strong as the traffic is more intense there, the marginal cost of circulation weaker than the traffic is higher, the standing fixed overheads of exploitation being proportionally very important. Because of the inertia of the shoed networks built using heavy investments, they ask for a long period of damping, the railroad needs bulky and stable flows. And it is there that intervene of many reserves because the forecasts of traffic of the port of Le Havre on the routings appear much more optimistic than those of the SNCF. Because it should not be forgotten that the profile of the container activity in Le Havre will be still strongly drawn by the French domestic market, that the interior railway hinterland of the port is especially in south-east and south-west. Admittedly the SNCF envisages the increase in the traffic in source or towards the French ports, but the estimates are lower than those of the port which, one can include/understand it in the current harbor competing context, must start to worry about not see the situation evolving/moving quickly. Indeed, the prospect for the installation of the led GCP, in the only taking into account of the port native of Le Havre in traffics freight, the SNCF and RF to perceive a combinative cost/difficult effectiveness after the authorized investments and the strongly probable increase in tolls.

With the SNCF, one is not against the idea of this line but one n the other hand claims an awakening of the harbor operators and in particular of the forwarding agents so that they are linked to set up a new system of marketing of the containers making it possible to make competitive prices of fixed price on the shuttles.

In addition, RF and the SNCF regard the axis Le Havre/Paris and the passage by the large belt as being most powerful. Besides the study on the GCP wishes the maintenance of the traffic on the radial one of the large belt which is and will remain, in spite of the delays involving of the prolonged times, the most powerful route for a great number of destinations.

Fortunately, there exists on this route a juxtaposition of interests and it is mainly necessary to go to see as regards foreigner to start again the project. Which are the flows concerned with the GCP ? First of all those of the axis is/western, in particular the evacuation of the traffic of the port of Le Havre, placed best on the Atlantic frontage. But there is also a potential détournable coming from the United Kingdom in direction from the Central Europe and Italy. The By-pass can indeed be an alternative for the traffics coming from the ports of the United Kingdom and to thus release the north-eastern transversal skirting to France the Belgian border, centers very borrowed which knows worrying problems of congestion. The forecasts of traffics on the GCP are thus re-examined with the rise especially within the framework of a co-operation between the national networks (corridor of freight).

There remains always the problem of the financing. RF made draw up a report/ratio on different the scénarii from installation of the By-pass and in forwarded to each DRE areas concerned with the GCP to incite them to take share with the investment. In a context of important budgetary restrictions, RF established a text which authorizes the manager of infrastructure to seek new partners in certain projects. On their side, the areas are not against the adjustment of this route since they have a service road, but as for the investment, they become more skeptics and consider, surely rightly, the rail traffic of transit well not very profitable.

C. The project of GCP within the framework of the corridors of freight

The treatment of a railway route at priority freight constitutes for the harbor community havraise only one answer partial to the question of the improvement of the railway service road of the port. Measurements of liberalization of the rail-bound transport are another point on which Le Havre must carry its interest to develop its hinterland.

In July 1996, the White Paper of NR. Kinnock «a strategy to revitalize the Community railroads » the need underlines for introducing into the railway environment of the mechanisms of market and for benefitting from the opening of the intracommunity borders. This document, putting forward block speeds of trains often lower than 20 km/h taking into account the technical stops in borders, suggests the creation of « freeways » whose double objective aims, on the one hand, to ensure the freedom of access to all the railway operators, and on the other hand, to facilitate and simplify the use of the railway infrastructure, in particular for the transport of transborder freight. The liberalization of railway Europe, pursuant to the European Directive 91/440, envisages, in addition to the free access to the national networks for any operator established in the European Union and the separation of the owner of with the management of the infrastructure, the installation of structures of co-operation between the networks to simplify the exploitation of the transport of transborder freight. This last objective gave place to the definition of railway routes dedicated to the routing of freight, initially called « freeways » then TERFF (Trans European Rail Freight Freeways), corridors reserved for circulations of freight, opened with the competition and controlled by a supranational authority. The TERFF must show according to the respect of the European legislation (Directives 91/440 and 95/18-19) some characteristics :

The single counter is the commercial structure representing all the managers of infrastructure concerned with the corridor transeuropéen created, charged granting the rights of access, tracing the circulation of the trains and with perceiving the royalties of use for the loan of the corridor. It is the single interlocutor for the customer in charge of coordination between the various national managers of infrastructure.

Tariffing is carried out by the addition of the national royalties. Tariff grids are thus installation. But of many differences in tolls between Member States cause difficulties again because some feel, like France, injured.

The impact on the prices of transport could reach nearly 25% of reduction. The new European agreement should reduce times of course of 20% and generate at the same time an additional traffic from two to three million tons per annum.

In the spirit of the European Commission, the freeways are only short-term solutions to reverse the current situation and to mark points in the battle against the road, while waiting for the final installation of liberalization.

The installation of the railway first freeways was officially announced in 1997 by the European Commission. Three layouts all, directed North-South were defined. They leave respectively Rotterdam and Hamburg/Bremerhaven to join according to the case, Italy or the Central Europe of which Sopron worms in Hungary. Their installation will be done on the basis of cooperation agreement between the companies managers. The networks are connected between them and thus exchange traffics : these systems then suppose a standardization technical (spacing of the ways, gauge of the vehicle, system of attachment and braking), operational (composition of the layouts and circulation of the material), commercial, tariff, legal and data-processing... to take a step ahead towards the interworking of the circulation of the trains. The times of routing could be reduced thanks to the technical improvement of the possibilities of international transit in Europe and will make the railroad more competitive. The block speed of the corridors could currently rise from 50 to 70 km/h instead of 16 km/h, thanks to reductions of waiting at the borders (change of machine of traction and operating staff) going up to 80%.

Other routes are also envisaged and in particular a corridor between the United Kingdom and Hungary.

One can notice that the first applications of the freeways are with the service of the large European ports being given the stake which they represent for the European economy that they feed by the terrestrial distribution of the goods. In the current context, the massification of flows of the ports towards their back-countries are thus a obene for the rail-bound transport.

In addition, the installation of the European first freeways causes the reserves even the reserves of the French actors, who they are the political powers or of the operators because the first corridors defined by Brussels are firstly directed North-South, thus serving the deepening of the Hanseatic back-countries and scaldéens and avoid France remarkably. Because the projects supported by the European Commission circumvent the reticent countries with a greater liberalization. Thus, Belgium France and Spain miss projects of Brussels. However, France, because of importance of its flows of transit, cannot remain with the variation and thus see traffics escaping to him. The French ports want them to also remain in the race of the European ports and thus made pressure on the French government and the SNCF in order to set up corridors of freight on the French territory. It results from it that the SNCF proposed its own vision of the corridors of freight and launched its project of « freightway ». This term was selected to show that this concept differs from that of the European Commission. France and its neighbors insist more particularly on the concept of co-operation between the railway networks and national companies offering the same quality of service as the European corridors, with costs quite as competitive. Only the railway companies and the international regroupings authorized by the managers concerned can circulate there. The difference is also expressed in the design of the single counter : the managers of infrastructure of each State can keep a control, and remain free to give or not mandate to the single counter with regard to the technical, administrative and financial agreements defining the conditions of access to the infrastructure. The managers of infrastructure preserve a national law (for the national needs).

Thus a legal and commercial combat between two currents is announced : one preaching the road of cooperation on a technical treatment of the routes, the other towards total liberalization and the opening of the networks, both having all the same jointly the emancipation of the mechanisms of market of the constraints of crossing of the borders. The French government and the SNCF do not want liberalization « savage », which would deprive them of the most profitable traffics.

In reaction to the publication of the first chart of the TERFF established by Brussels, the SNCF, associated the railroads Luxembourg and Belgian, announced in 1998 the creation of a railway corridor for freight between Muizen, rail junction serving Antwerp, and Lyon/Sibelin/Vénissieux. This corridor should be prolonged towards Italy and Spain.

One can then include/understand the irritation of the port of Le Havre when it discovered the chart of the European corridors on the one hand, the creation of the freightway between Antwerp, competitor serious of Le Havre, and the heart of the hinterland of the port native of Le Havre on the other hand.

The French claims in particular relating to the release of a corridor between Le Havre and Strasbourg and its prolongation until Sopron were rejected a long time by Brussels because of German opposition. The French approach of the railway corridor runs up against the very liberal design of Brussels, supported by German and Dutch, who include the coastal traffic. It seems however that the copy was re-examined and that the European railway chart will grow rich in particular by a corridor connecting Le Havre with the east. Indeed, in order to develop the share of market of the traffic freight between the United Kingdom, the ports of Le Havre and Dunkirk and the center of Europe, the dB AG, Eurotunnel, the ÖBB, RoeEE AG, Railtrack, RF and the SNCF are agreed to create a corridor of freight between the zones of concentration of the traffics of Glasgow, of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Dunkirk, Le Havre, Metz, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Wurzburg, Nuremberg, Passau, Wels, Linz, Vienna, Sopron.

The master agreement signed in Vienna the 3/3/1999 is the concretization of the contacts established between these railway companies which had ended the 3/7/1999 to the signature of a letter of intent for the installation of a corridor between the west and the center of Europe. The installation of this corridor is done pursuant to the European regulation, on the basis of cooperation agreement between the companies managers of infrastructure. Four international furrows were established and make it possible to connect Sopron daily, in Mossend close to Glasgow or Le Havre. The single counter, located in Austria coordinates the processes of planning of the furrows and their attribution with the railway companies or the international regroupings respecting the provisions of the directives 91/440, 95/18-19 which make the request of it. However this corridor is only theoretical and exists only on one legal level, no service was not marketed for the moment, the first trains being able to be assured only after the payment many technical problems which return the course much expensive too.

D. Competitor projects of Antwerp and Rotterdam

Projects of creation of heavy axes reserved for the routing of freight exist already abroad and aim at improving technically and commercially the methods the pre one and post-routing of the ports of the Benelux countries. They obviously seek them also to make more competitive the evacuation of the containers maritime and to thus push back the depth of the hinterland of the wearing of Antwerp and Rotterdam. Two projects are proposed of which that of Rotterdam which was signed by the Dutch government :

The Dutch authorities for their part drew up a railway project of line dedicated to freight, like the GCP in France, called it « Betuwe Lijn ». Long of 160 km, Betuwe Lijn will be apparently suited to procedures of exploitation innovating for a European railroad : long and heavy trains posting a weight with the axle of 35 tons with the American northern technique of the double stack (two superimposed containers). Conceived like an artery of massive evacuation by shuttles of the terminals of Maasvlakte in Arnhem (the most Western extension of the wearing of Rotterdam) towards the distribution networks road, river and railway European starting from the German border, the project envisages a two-track line with a capacity of ten trains per hour in each direction for a block speed of 120 km/h. A project which can make dream Le Havre. The line is the first stage of an axis which should be prolonged to the Swiss border according to agreements' taken between the Dutch and German governments. Startup waited in 2004.

This project revêt a cardinal importance for the first European port because the railroad has for the very weak moment only one share of the terrestrial service road of Rotterdam (4,5% in 1997) but the port quickly became aware of the stake of the railway tool under system of shuttles to intensify flows of containers towards the back-country and to answer thus effectively the massification of the maritime transport. Currently under the threat of the railway congestion, Rotterdam will be able to thus accompany the expansion by the rail and envisages from 2005-2006 to quintuple the capacity of the infrastructures.

This project was adopted among the 14 projects of priority infrastructures of transport defined by Brussels in the Council European of Essen in 1994 and will be entirely financed by the European Union.

On their side, the Belgians who also included/understood the stake of the rail push one « old project » competitor, serving Rhur and it « blue banana », of a capital stake for the wearing of Antwerp : it was about « The steel Rhine » or « Ljzeren Rijn », the rehabilitation of an existing way since the mouth from the Scheldt in Antwerp in direction of Germany (Mönchengladbach) and which would be used according to same principles' as those of Betuwe Lijn (trains blocks by shuttles).

The existence of this way reduces thus considerably the cost of adjustment of the infrastructure which would rise of 300 million to a billion francs (according to electrification or not) against 74 billion for Betuwe Lijn !

This project is thus a formidable opportunity for the Belgian port which could quickly compete with the terrestrial service road of the competitor ports and in particular that of Rotterdam.

However, the Belgian project crosses part of the Dutch territory before reaching Germany. The latter have it thus « chance » to be able to block the eminently dangerous Belgian project for the project of Rotterdam.

CONCLUSION

The rationalization of the maritime transport conferred an importance increased on the organization and the effectiveness of the operations with ground where the interior service road and the harbor passage alone represent more half of the total cost of the chain of transport.

The competitiveness of the maritime transport is played ground today, and the competitiveness of the harbor places which endeavor each one to attract the armaments, depends from now on very closely on the performances of the networks and the offer of terrestrial services.

If the nautical performances of accessibility are essential with the reception of the ship, they are not enough any more to determine the choices of stopover of the ship and the wearing of transit for the goods. The characteristics of productivity, frequency and massification of the terrestrial vectors of transport became differential criteria justifying the final choice of the armaments. It is the attractivity with respect to the armaments which conditions the future development.

Port 2000 appears obvious to face competition insofar as the port needs new stations with quay likely to accommodate largest carries containers, at the same time for quantitative and qualitative reasons (reduction of the duration of the stopovers and massification of the traffic). Also, its realization must intervene before the traffics are not durably stabilized on other European ports.

The project is not only maritime and relates to also the integration of the whole of the devices of terrestrial service road. This is why the port native of Le Havre wishes to develop at the same time the quality of its terrestrial service road, on the level of the road transport which constitutes the first means of transport for the pre one and the post-routing of the goods which forward by the port on a back-country largely concentrated on the Paris area, on the level of the river transport which could contribute even if it is limited to the Island of France, with the massification of the routings, but more especially on the level of the infrastructures of rail-bound transport which would make it possible in Le Havre to profit from a service road developing the assets and advantages of the rail-bound transport, namely transport of containers about long distances. This one would allow the harbor place, in a context favorable to the generalization and the harmonization of the rail-bound transport on a European scale thanks to the installation of the freeways (TERFF) and freightways, to deepen its hinterland.

With the quality of the terrestrial service road must be added the extension with the hinterland in which the port can offer to the ship-owners the best conditions of terrestrial routing at the best price, in short the best cost ratio/effectiveness.

For that Le Havre must have an infrastructure ready to reinforce these elements of competitiveness, which makes it possible to optimize the reduction of the times of routing and the costs.

The great railway skirting of the Paris basin would be a formidable advisability to improve the fluidity of the traffic towards the east of France and the Central Europe and to reach the great European industrial centers turned towards the world economy. But one should not forget only if the goodwill of the port is almost exclusively French today (more than 90%), its share of market of 30% is not satisfactory especially in zones particularly and geographically with its range like south-east in more served by the ports of north. A competitive access in time as in price is of primary importance to guarantee to take a leadership uncontested in south-east and a significant share of the market towards Italy. The loan of the axis the Harbor-Mantes remains essential for commercial competitiveness in these zones. The passage by the northern By-pass represents really a diversion of route with lengthenings of course from 20 to 40% which it is not easily conceivable to see compensated by the quality of the routing.

It is however essential to invest massively for the modernization of this axis. The observation of the geographical situation of the Amiens section/Chalons in fact nevertheless the link lack a strategic axis of interest in the western relations is or western south is (the United Kingdom, France, Central Europe). The adjustment of this fast route doubling the north-eastern artery is thus of the general interest of the national network and even more of the European network.

Le projet de grand contournement ferroviaire du bassin parisien au depart du port du Havre dans le cadre des corridors de fret européens

University Paris IV Sorbonne

under the direction of Mr. E.Auphan

Promotion 1998/1999

Novel LAUTERFING September 1999

INTRODUCTION 6

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PORT OF LE HAVRE : A NEED 9

A. The massification of the maritime transport 9

B. Compete with between « hand ports » 17

C. The port : multimode platform of transshipment 22

D. The project Le Havre « Port 2000 » 24

A. Importance of the hinterland 42

B. Irrigation of the traffics between the various means of transport in the back-country

C. A new context favourable with the development of the rail-bound transport

D. Shuttles 57

A. The saturation of the Parisian node 66

B. Route and evaluation of the project 68

C. The project of GCP within the framework of the corridors of freight 77

D. Competitor projects of Antwerp and Rotterdam 82

CONCLUSION 85

Bibliography 87

INTRODUCTION

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PORT OF LE HAVRE : A NEED

A. The massification of the maritime transport

C. Compete with between « hand ports »

C. The port : multimode platform of transshipment

Why Port 2000 ?

A. Importance of the hinterland

C. A new context favourable with the development of the rail-bound transport

D. Shuttles

A. The saturation of the Parisian node

State of the infrastructure

The section Motteville-Montérolier Buchy east can be the starting point of the GCP

C. The project of GCP within the framework of the corridors of freight

D. Competitor projects of Antwerp and Rotterdam

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

General works

Articles of press

Specialized works