| Société Nationale des Chemins de fer français | |
|---|---|
| Locale | France & Monaco[1] |
| Predecessor | See SNCF History |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) |
| Length | 32,000 km (20,000 mi) |
| Headquarters | Montparnasse and 14th arrondissement, Paris |
| Website | sncf.com/en_EN/flash/ |
The SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer français; "National Corporation of French Railways"), is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network. Its functions include operation of rail services for passengers and freight, and maintenance and signalling of rail infrastructure owned by Réseau Ferré de France (RFF).
SNCF employs more than 180,000 people in 120 countries across the globe. The rail network consists of about 32,000 km (20,000 mi) of route, of which 1,800 km (1,100 mi) are high-speed lines and 14,500 km (9,000 mi) electrified. About 14,000 trains are operated daily. The chairman of SNCF is Guillaume Pépy. The company's headquarters is in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, in the Rue du Commandant Mouchotte.[2]
As of 2010 SNCF is rank 22 in France and 214 globally on the Fortune Global 500.[3]
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SNCF operates almost all of France's railway system, including the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, meaning "High-Speed Train"), In the 1970s, SNCF began the TGV high-speed train program with the intention of creating the world's fastest railway network. It came to fruition in 1981, when the first TGV service, from Paris to Lyon, was inaugurated. Today, SNCF operates 1,850 km (about 1,150 miles) of designated high-speed track that accommodate more than 800 high-speed trains per day. SNCF’s TGV trains carry more than 100 million passengers a year. TGV lines and TGV technology are now spread across several European countries in addition to South Korea.
In the past SNCF also owned the European tracks, but this has changed due to EU Directive 91/440. Since 1997 the tracks and other rail infrastructure have belonged to a separate government establishment, Réseau Ferré de France; this change was intended to open the market to independent train operating companies, although few have yet appeared.
SNCF's TGV has set many world speed records, the most recent on April 3, 2007, when a new version of the TGV dubbed the V150 with larger wheels than the usual TGV, was able to cover more ground with each rotation and had a stronger 25,000 hp (18,600 kW) engine, broke the world speed record for conventional rail trains, reaching 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph).
SNCF has a remarkable safety record. After nearly 30-years in operation, SNCF’s TGV system has never experienced a fatal accident.
Since the 1990s, SNCF has been selling railway carriages to regional governments, with the creation of the Train Express Régional brand. SNCF also maintains a broad scope of international business that includes work on freight lines, inter-city lines and commute lines. SNCF experts provide logistics, design, construction, operations and maintenance services. SNCF operates the international ticketing agency, Rail Europe.
SNCF has employees in 120 countries offering extensive overseas and cross border consulting. Those projects include:
• Israel: Assistance and Training. SNCF International provides assistance to Israel Railways in every area of rail operations including projects to upgrade the network's general safety regulations. Other assistance and training programs involve Infrastructure and the Traction Division.
• Taiwan: Operations Training. SNCF supervised the prime contractor responsible for construction of the Taiwan Railways Administration’s main high-speed rail line. It also trained rail traffic controllers, drivers, and crew members. On behalf of the Government of Taiwan, SNCF managed the high-speed rail Command Control Centre.
• United Kingdom: Maintenance. In 2007-2008, SNCF-International consultants audited the maintenance practices applied to the track, signalling and overhead electric power line on British high-speed rail lines connecting London to the Channel Tunnel. In addition, it conducted an audit of the maintainer’s performance from the service quality and cost control standpoint, made recommendations for improvements, and proposed a three-year Business Plan.
• South Korea: HSR Electrification Design. SNCF advised Korean Railroad on the electrification of track between Daegu and Busan and on linking existing conventional track to the new high-speed line. SNCF also assisted in selecting and inspecting high-speed rolling stock and trained 400 senior manager, engineers, and executives in a broad range of skills, including signalling, catenaries, track, rolling stock maintenance, HSR operation, safety management, marketing, and passenger information systems. Until the end of 2009, SNCF have assisted Korea in maintaining its high-speed.
• Spain: Signalling System. SNCF partnered with the Spanish railroad infrastructure manager in the study, supply, installation, and maintenance of the standard EU rail signaling system along the Madrid-Lleida high-speed rail line. On behalf of the Spanish Government, SNCF designed and led maintenance operations on this line over a two-year period.
• France: Lead Infrastructure and Rolling Stock Maintainer – The scope of SNCF’s maintenance duties is staggering: it maintains 32,000 km (20,000 mi) of track, 26,500 main sets of points and crossings, 2,300 signal boxes, 80,000 track circuits, over 1 million relays, etc. On the rolling stock side, SNCF maintains 3,900 locomotives and 500 high-speed trains. Each of SNCF’s TGV trains travels more than 39,000 km (24,000 mi) a month – enough to circle the globe. Each year SNCF’s Human Resources Department provides over 1.2 million hours of training to its over 25,000 employees.
SNCF was formed in 1938 on the nationalisation of France's five main railways (Chemin de Fer in English means railway, literally, 'path of iron'). These were the:
The French state originally took 51% ownership of SNCF and invested large amounts of public subsidies into the system. Today, SNCF is 100% owned by the French government.
Between 1941 and 1944, SNCF transported nearly 77,000 Jews and other Holocaust victims from France to Nazi death camps.[4] SNCF billed Nazi-occupied France for third-class tickets,[5] although passengers were transported in cattle cars.[6] After the liberation of France, SNCF continued to seek payment for its role in transporting Holocaust victims.[5]
Given its role in transporting troops and weaponry, as well as in conveying goods, the rail infrastructure and rolling stocks became a prime target for actions by the French Resistance aimed a disrupting and fighting the German occupying forces.[7] SNCF employees at various levels could thus make, and did make, considerable contributions to the Resistance.[8] Among the SNCF employees who actively joined the Resistance, a large subset were in the Résistance-Fer movement which focused on reporting the movement of German troops to the Allied forces and sabotaging the railways rolling stock as well as infrastructure. In support of the Allied invasions in 1944, sabotage was especially effective in preventing German troop deployments to the front and in hindering their retreat later.[7] Nearly 1,700 SNCF railway workers were killed or deported for resisting Nazi orders.[9][10]
In 2001, SNCF was sued by the father of MEP Alain Lipietz because of the railroad’s role in transporting members of his family to the Drancy deportation camp during World War II. In 2006 the local administrative court in Toulouse found SNCF guilty of aiding in deportations.[11][12] This ruling was overturned in 2007 when the Bordeaux appeal court ruled that the administrative courts did not have jurisdiction to rule on the legal liability of SNCF.[13] On further appeal, the court's lack of jurisdiction was upheld by France's Conseil d'Etat.[14]
The first time that SNCF as such publicly expressed regret for its role in transporting Jews to Nazi death camps in World War II was in November 2010.[15] Some sources linked this change of language to the potentially lucrative market for high-speed rail contracts in the United States of America, since the SNCF has been criticized in the US for failing to apologize for its involvement.[6][15][16] For example in 2010, a California legislator introduced a bill requiring all companies bidding on California rail projects to disclose involvement in transporting Holocaust victims.[17] On 25 January 2011 the president of the SNCF, Guillaume Pépy, expressed his company's first formal public apology directly to Holocaust victims.[10] In addition, the SNCF donated to the French Shoah Memory Foundation a 3.5 hectare field near a train station from which most deportations to Nazi camps departed.[9]
The legal pressure and campaign against the SNCF have been considered uninformed and unfair by many, including some Holocaust experts and historians of France, considering the Nazi occupation of France and the German's generalized use of French national institutions as their own.[18]. Among these are Arno Klarsfeld, son of famed Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld noted for documenting German and French Nazi collaborators, who called the American criticisms of SNCF "historically inaccurate"[19]. [20] Klarsfeld said: "This American pressure on the S.N.C.F. has tarnished the memory of 1,647 train drivers who were executed or deported and never came back. It discards the role of German authorities and the French Vichy state and lessens the responsibility of those who took charge of deporting the Jews who lived in France."[21]. Also, since the SNCF's role as a bastion of the French resistance was in part due to the significant number of Communists in its ranks, the Communist-aligned CGT or General Confederation of Labour (France) union stated that SNCF workers “brought a spirit of solidarity and fight” and “paid a heavy price during the war" for their resistance activities. [22].
Railroad historian and reporter Don Phillips was highly critical of the anti-SNCF Holocaust campaign, noting that Keolis (the subsidiary of SNCF involved in the bidding for American work) did not exist during World War II, that the SNCF was under the control of the Nazis "who made it clear that any railway worker who refused to work would immediately be shot", that more than 1,200 such French railway workers were deported to concentration camps, and that SNCF and the Israel Railways do a significant amount of business today.[23] He also argued that SNCF has been transparent about its past role in the Holocaust even prior to the recent legal campaign, including commisioning independent French academics to write a 914 page complete history of the SCNF and World War II as early as 1996 (with full, unrestricted access to all records), and that the SNCF has repeatedly worked with Jewish groups to educate its current workers about the horrors of World War II even though it is not required to do so.[23]
When the regional transportation unit of SNCF, Keolis, bid on a MARC train contract in 2011, Maryland passed a law requiring SNCF to fully disclose its role in the transporting of Jews to Nazi camps. The disclosure was required to be done to the satisfaction of the Maryland state archivist, without regard to past disclosure and archival efforts the firm had made.[4] Keolis and its parent SNCF were denied an opportunity to present testimony during the hearings. In fact, during these hearings the Jewish director of the Holocaust-awareness organization Shoah Memorial Fund (Memorial de la Shoah), Jacques Fredj, attempted to testify on SNCF's behalf, but the committee instead "demanded to know how much he had been paid to lie".[23]
As of June, 2011, a year after MARC started looking for a replacement to CSX to operate two of its line, Keolis's ability to bid on the MARC contract remained uncertain with the new disclosure law in place, yet no other bidder had been found. On June 5th, 2011, the Washington Post ran an editorial critical of the disclosure law, noting that SNCF has been working for years on digitizing its records and was well along in that effort regardless, and that the Maryland law may be counterproductive in requiring items or formats counter to SNCF's current system or to French law. The Post also reported that some in the Maryland's Attorney General's Office office worry that the law is unconstitutional, may risk retaliation towards Maryland firms overseas, and may risk federal funding for Maryland "by imposing arbitrary procurement demands on a single company."[24] At the contract proposal deadline of November 2011, the MTA declined to announce the bidding companies. No other company than Keolis had decided to join MARC bidding at that time.[25]
SNCF is a recognized leader in eco-mobility with a commitment to become the world’s first operator to offer carbon neutral travel at no extra cost to travellers. SNCF has cut emissions on its cross-channel Paris To London route by 31% in two years by using more electricity from non-fossil fuel sources. SNCF’s 39 manufacturing facilities are in the process of “going green” and 9 sites are already ISO 14000 certified. SNCF developed an interactive website to help travellers calculate the environmental impact of their travel choices.
SNCF codeshares with Air Austral, Air France, Air Tahiti Nui, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Middle East Airlines, Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways and SriLankan Airlines and in exchange, allows passengers on those flights to book rail service between Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy (near Paris) and Aix-en-Provence, Angers, Avignon, Bordeaux, Le Mans, Lille, Lyon Part-Dieu, Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, Nîmes, Poiters, Rennes, Tours, and Valence with their airline. The IATA designator used by airlines in connection with these journeys is 2C.
Continental Airlines discontinued its codeshare with SNCF as of August 15, 2010.[26]
As of 2010 SNCF is divided into five groups[27]:
SNCF has full or partial shares in a large number of companies, the majority of which are rail or transport related. These include:[29]
General freight transport:
Passenger transport
Tickets
Consulting
Housing
SNCF has its head office in the Montparnasse area of the 14th arrondissement of Paris,[31] located near the Gare Montparnasse.[32]
SNCF used to have its head office in the Saint-Lazare area of the 9th arrondissement.[32][33] In 1996 the president of SNCF, Louis Gallois, announced that SNCF would move its headquarters to a new location during the middle of 1997.[34]
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