Additional cost of the RER E to the west: Ile-de-France wants to have the slate settled by the SNCF

Who will pay for the additional cost of 1.7 billion euros for the extension of the RER E from Paris to Mantes-la Jolie? In session this Wednesday, the elected officials of the Ile-de-France regional council returned the ball to SNCF Réseau, listing what they consider to be the operator’s shortcomings in the conduct of the site.

If elected officials from all sides of the information and evolution mission (MIE) recognize thea “truthfulness and the inevitability of hazards encountered” during construction, they also point “a significant and structural deficit in the transmission of information by the contracting authority SNCF Réseau on the cost at completion of the operation and the consumption of the provision for risks”.

Funders – State, Ile-de-France region, departments, Société du Grand Paris and SNCF Réseau – “were only systematically informed a posteriori of cost drifts, without being able to take a position in the case of program modifications or phase accelerations”, still write the elected officials, for whom these observations “show a clear and significant deficiency in the conduct of the project by SNCF Réseau”.

The commissioners also denounced the method “very debatable which consisted in balancing the continuation of the site to obtain an extension from the public funders”, underlines the president of the MIE Vincent Poiret, elected by the right-wing majority of the president of the region Valérie Pécresse.

For the rapporteur (PS) Jean-Marc Germain, in addition to a “insufficient preparation”, “poor assessment of provisions for risks” and “incompressible deadlines”, is good the “lack of information from funders” which constitutes the “most serious fact”.

In February, SNCF Réseau officials confirmed that this complex project consisting of digging 8 km of tunnels and adapting 47 km of existing tracks would cost between 4.7 and 5.4 billion euros, depending on the contingency provisions, against 3.8 billion envisaged at the launch of the project in 2016.

Ile-de-France elected officials are asking SNCF Réseau to “pursue the project until completion on schedule”, i.e. “before the end of 2023” for the Paris-Nanterre section and “before the end of 2025” for the section to Mantes-la-Jolie.

They believe that the public company shouldt “cover the additional costs not accepted by the project funders” or failing that, the State“if the golden rule or the trajectory of an objective and performance contract prohibits it”.

Erected to control the indebtedness of the infrastructure manager, the golden rule prevents it from investing beyond the ratio between its net financial debt and its operating margin.