Thierry Guimbaud, head of the Transport Regulatory Authority: "On competition, the railway industry is going to reach a tipping point"
Since its creation in 2009, the Transport Regulatory Authority (ART) has supported the arrival of competitors on the rail network. This has accelerated in recent weeks with the rise of Trenitalia on the high-speed network and the operation, since June, of the Marseille-Nice TER line by the German company Transdev . For ART President Thierry Guimbaud, the current revolution must be accompanied by systemic changes so that the arrival of competition benefits passengers.
In a rapidly changing railway world, with the concrete arrival of competition on several lines, what is the role of ART?There is a regulator because there is a monopoly that is not that of a transport company – SNCF Voyageurs – but that of SNCF Réseau, the infrastructure manager. The ART ensures that tolls do not exceed costs and that the manager is incentivized to perform, since, in the absence of a market, there is a risk of rent-seeking or economic inefficiency of the monopoly company.
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Le Monde
