Subscribe to newsletterThe calendar for the Seine- Northern Europe canal, the central link in the European Seine-Escaut connection, is accelerating. In the next few weeks, the public utility decree for this project included in the Grenelle de l’Environnement round table process will be published. And the launch of this great river and intermodal project will finally be reality.
“… However, France remains a Tom Thumb in comparison with Benelux or Germany” Pierre-Yves Biet - Voies Navigables de France
Consequently, it is a key moment for this link that will allow the connection, for wide craft, of the Seine basin to the 20,000 km of the European river network, and beyond that, access to the Rhine and the Danube. It will remedy the absence of a link between two structured systems: The Seine valley and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais/Benelux network. “Growing regularly since the 1970s, the river mode of goods transport has been gaining ground year by year since the opening of Port 2000 in Le Havre. However, France remains a Tom Thumb in comparison with Benelux or Germany”, emphasises Pierre-Yves Biet, development division manager in the Seine-Nord Europe mission, during a conference organized on this theme by Keops.
The water route is not lacking in assets compared to road: A lower transport cost with a certain ability to bulk up flows, reliable transit times, a sure mode of transport and finally the ability to serve customers in the heart of conurbations. The stakes for France are high: Reposition the distribution centres close to bulked up locations and continue this bulking up into the interior.
The famous internal ports will develop on 360 hectares in four port activity zones for industrial and logistic use: Cambrai-Marquion (156 hectares), Péronne-Haute-Picardie (60 hectares), Nesle (90 hectares) and Noyon (60 hectares). To these are added, 5 transhipment keys on the Seine-Nord Europe and multimodal centre projects in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and the South of Picardy. The public-private partnership contract has been chosen to finance these centres.
Seine-Nord Europe, a structural project for European logistics, will be operational, if all goes well, in 2015 with work starting in 2010. The first studies started… just 20 years ago.