Transport infrastructure management

Transport infrastructure management has become a major economic challenge, since it involves increasing the resources and efficiency of the existing network, and limiting the construction of new infrastructure to what is strictly necessary, which is proving increasingly difficult. It calls on technological and institutional innovations that began to emerge in the 1980s and are set to take full effect in the 21st century.

There is now a new activity, indeed a new profession, that of infrastructure manager: the model, originally developed in Anglo-Saxon countries, of separating (unbundling) activities between infrastructure, considered a natural monopoly, and its use. In the electricity sector, this model has led to the separation of transmission (network management) from upstream activities (generation) and downstream activities (distribution), which are open to competition. It is gradually being implemented in the rail sector under European impetus. France was one of the first countries to apply this model, with the creation of the public establishment Réseau ferré de France (RFF) in 1997, whose role was expanded in 2003 to include responsibility for capacity management.

The role of road infrastructure manager is also evolving, and now extends far beyond the freeway concession companies, which are responsible for a very small part of the network: certain regulatory activities on the national network, for example, fall within the remit of infrastructure management. Airport management is similar in many respects to land-based infrastructure management, particularly in terms of flow regulation. It is, however, a very specific subject.

In what follows, we will identify the technical and economic dimensions of infrastructure management, considered in a broader sense: managing infrastructure means keeping the network running smoothly through proper maintenance, and minimizing the consequences of disrupted situations, it also means – and increasingly – acting in a variety of ways on the demand for use of this infrastructure. This last dimension of management, known as control or regulation, is sometimes distinguished from the first. This distinction does not appear to be necessary in the transport sector, particularly in the modern institutional organization of road and rail transport, which clearly defines the expanded role of the infrastructure manager.

Finally, it should be pointed out that the infrastructure manager generally receives his rights from the public authorities, in widely varying regulatory forms:

• it is often separate from the owner of the infrastructure. In the case of rail transport, it was only in 1997 that ownership was transferred from the State to RFF....