End of road for Seine-Nord?

The Seine-Nord canal project is now very close to being abandoned by the French Government, along with the Lyon-Turin rail link and base tunnel and about 15 other sections of the high-speed rail network, promoted in 2010 under the ‘Grenelle’ package of measures for the environment (reported by Les Echos)

An ‘excuse’ for abandoning the canal project, which is the subject of transnational agreements with Belgium and the Netherlands, is the increase in estimated cost of the 106km long canal, with 7 locks, from €4.5 billion to €5 or 6 billion. The statement by Secretary of State for the Budget Jérôme Cahuzac also calls into question the economic viability of the project.

The article in Les Echos underlines the difference in treatment between railway and waterway projects mentioned in the July 6 post on this subject.

a) The high-speed railway lines where works have already started are saved from the chop; the preparatory works already carried out on Seine-Nord appear to count less; they include the lowering of a section of the A29 motorway to allow for the future aqueduct.

b) The economic return on the canal is doubted, but no mention is made of the rate of return on the railway projects; assumptions are made, fuelled by environmentalist policies, on the network benefits of adding new sections to the rail network, while the network effect of linking the Seine basin to the Rhine is ignored or at least underestimated in a purely financial analysis. (It takes time to set up new logistics practices and transport chains.)

The competitive dialogue between VNF, project authority, and the two candidates, Bouygues and Vinci, is to be completed by October, but it seems that the construction giants have themselves been playing into the hands of the new Government, by preparing for abandonment of the project. They have been ‘going through the motions’, while possibly even agreeing that the project was a non-starter and increasing the cost estimates. The limits of the PPP exercise have been starkly revealed.

Evidence of this possible ‘death foretold’ is the attitude of the two companies, whose leaders hardly reacted to the news, as if they had themselves been promoting what Les Echos describes as an inevitable ‘return to reality’.

It remains to see what pressure the European Commission and the Belgian and Dutch partners in the Seine-Scheldt project can bring to bear on the French Government, to restart the project on a sounder basis. The EU’s funding share for the Lyon-Turin base tunnel would alone pay for the new canal! Even at €6 billion, the cost of the canal is only a fraction of the €260 billion cost of all the the planned high-speed rail lines.

Chanaz harbour an ill-conceived development?

It is sad how ideas conceived with the best of intentions by local politicians sometimes go hopelessly wrong because their implementation is dictated by trends and political expediency.
Visiting Chanaz on May 6, I discovered this impressive addition to what is already a superb site, and one of my top 10 waterside villages in France. This is at the western end of the Canal de Savières which links the upper river Rhône to Lake Bourget.
You see this ‘lakeside village’ and think ‘the architects had fun there’. You see hundreds of people enjoying the site on a glorious May day. Then your attention is drawn to the fine pontoons complete with water and electricity points. And you wonder why none of the chalets has been rented, and why there are no boats in the harbour?

New Chanaz harbour

New harbour and pontoons, but no boats

Then comes the explanation… and the disappointment, at least on the second observation. Access to this idyllic harbour is open to electrically-powered boats only (as well as unpowered craft), as shown by the sign on the swing-bridge over the harbour entrance.

The only electric boats present in the region are open boats for hire by the hour, and would not be clients for such an installation. So it seems that the mayor and his council have either been misled by the designers of the project, or have given in to pressure from environmentalists or government departments.

By excluding nearly all powered craft, the harbour and its pontoons are rendered practically useless, and that part of the total investment of EUR 1.8 million will be sadly wasted, while the ‘regular’ moorings along the backwater of the Rhône at Chanaz are fully occupied with many boats on the waiting list.  European regulations on boat engine emissions and noise (through the technical requirements for inland waterway craft) are increasingly stringent, so excluding boats from this harbour is a misguided choice.