Rail infrastructure: connecting people and communities
VINCI Railways (VINCI Concessions) finances, designs, builds, maintains and operates rail and urban transport infrastructure. In France, VINCI Railways manages the South Europe Atlantic high-speed rail line, the GSM-Rail communications network and a part of the reserved lane public transport system in the French overseas territory of Martinique. Mitigating the environmental impact of transport infrastructures as well as implementing and monitoring offsetting measures are an integral part of the projects developed by the Group.
The South Europe Atlantic high-speed rail line
Designed, built and operated by VINCI and its shareholder partners in the concession company LISEA, under a concession contract with SNCF Réseau running until 2061, the 340 km Tours-Bordeaux high-speed rail line (including 38 km of connecting lines) connects Paris to Bordeaux in just two hours. The second-busiest high-speed line in France after Paris-Lyon, it recorded more than 25,000 train movements in 2023.
Since it was brought into service in 2017, it has served almost 140 million passengers and has contributed to the development of the greater Bordeaux area and the broader south-west region of France. Its construction culminated in one of the greatest infrastructure projects of the 2010s in France and involved 8,500 employees, including 2,000 workers recruited and trained locally from the communities.
The technical performance of both operating and maintenance activities (performed by MESEA) contribute to the line’s service regularity, which exceeded 96% in 2024.
Protecting biodiversity along the line
To limit the line’s impact on its environment, LISEA is managing (until 2061) the offsetting measures implemented over a total area of 3,800 hectares to achieve no net loss of biodiversity due to its construction. In 2021, LISEA and MESEA also set up the “Fonds SEA pour la Transition des Territories” fund.
With a budget of €3 million from 2021 to 2026, the fund organises calls for projects to support the transition to ecological and inclusive agriculture in the regions crossed by the high-speed line. 26 projects focusing on the environmental performance of farms and the development of local supply chains were selected and supported in 2024.
Building and equipping railway infrastructure
In addition to its activities as a concession company and project manager, VINCI is also a leading force in the railway infrastructure construction and equipment sector. The Group is one of the main construction firms involved in the Grand Paris Express in France, and is also building the HS2 line in the UK, the Confederation Line in Ottawa, Canada, and the City Rail Link in Auckland, New Zealand.
On such projects, VINCI Construction harnesses its complementary skills in major project management, civil engineering and specialist works (foundations, structures, tracks and catenaries, worksite and civil works supervision, etc.).
VINCI Energies and Cobra IS, the two divisions of the Energy business, may be involved in a whole range of works for equipping the lines and ensuring peak performance, such as electrical architectures, traction power, ventilation, fibre optics, surveillance, traffic monitoring and management systems, and so on.
