SNCF announced it in spring 2024: major works are planned on the POLT railway line, Paris-Orléans-Limoges-Toulouse. Between August 2025 and January 2026, About fifty kilometers of rails need to be changednorth of the Aubrais. SNCF Réseau plans to suspend train traffic during the day to carry out this work but had indicated that it could not communicate in detail about these cuts before “the end of summer 2024.” The announcements are still awaited, in mid-September 2024. “The SNCF is not communicating because users and the Region have requested that this decision be reviewed.” explains François Bonneau, president (PS) of the Centre-Val de Loire region. “I have asked the SNCF, at national and regional level, that this decision be reviewed.”
“For the moment, the SNCF is telling us ‘it’s not possible’ (…) because the line is very dilapidated, that these are major works and that if we had to take only the night time, the time to set up the site, the time to lift the site so that the trains can run, they would only have three hours to work” continues François Bonneau, who admits the difficulty of finding a solution with SNCF Réseau so that users “are penalized as little as possible. In all cases, there must be sufficient capacity for alternative transport.“
“These works are essential”
Daytime traffic would be cut from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. if this solution were to be adopted. Negotiations are continuing, says François Bonneau, but “For the moment, the SNCF tells us that technically, it is not possible. It must be specified that these works are essential. If they are so massive, it is because for decades, the work has not been done.” Recalling the fatal train accident in Brétigny-sur-Orgein 2013, the president of the Centre-Val de Loire region explained that it was necessary to “to restore but to find solutions that allow traffic to be maintained at a sufficient level.”
