VINCI Railways
VINCI Railways finances, designs, builds, maintains and operates rail and urban transport infrastructure. In France, it manages the South Europe Atlantic high-speed rail line, a part of the reserved lane public transport system in the French overseas territory of Martinique, and the GSM-Rail communications network until April 2025.
VINCI Concessions consolidated its position as lead shareholder of LISEA in 2024 by acquiring an additional 8.6% of the capital, giving it a 42% stake.
South Europe Atlantic high-speed rail line
VINCI Concessions consolidated its position as lead shareholder in LISEA, the concession company for the South Europe Atlantic (SEA) high-speed line, by acquiring the 8.6% share of the capital previously held by Ardian and the Caisse des Dépôts, taking VINCI’s stake to 42%. This 302 km line, which connects Paris to Bordeaux in just two hours, was built by VINCI and its partners under a contract with SNCF Réseau that runs until 2061, and is the second busiest high-speed line in France after Paris–Lyon. In 2024, it recorded 74 daily train movements on average, with an occupancy rate of around 85%, i.e. almost 23 million passengers. Since it was brought into service in July 2017, the line has served around 140 million passengers and has made a significant contribution to the development of the greater Bordeaux area and the broader Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.
With growing demand from users and the opening to competition of the passenger rail market, LISEA intends to develop additional connections by welcoming new operators. To this end, it has launched construction of a maintenance and stabling site for trains with high-speed capability in the municipality of Marcheprime, near Bordeaux. The construction permit was granted in 2024, and works will start mid-2025, with the site scheduled to launch operations at end-2027. The new high-speed train operator Proxima has already announced plans to use the site for its future trains. LISEA and MESEA, the line maintenance company owned 70% by VINCI Concessions and 30% by Systra, work hand in hand every day to guarantee the safety of train movements. The safety supervision system involves all employees and management, in close collaboration with SNCF Réseau and the rail companies, and relies primarily on the training delivered by MESEA Academy, a training centre certified by the French national rail safety authority (EPSF). Line service regularity, which exceeded 96% in 2024 – 99% taking into account only incidents attributable to the concession company – confirms the high level of both operational and maintenance performance. These results are further driven by methods and tools at the cutting edge of technological innovation.
For instance, in collaboration with the startup NGX Robotics, MESEA developed and brought into service, in 2024, the autonomous drone LOUIS, which automatically measures catenary geometry. Furthermore, over the past few years LISEA and MESEA have developed the SEACloud platform, which harnesses artificial intelligence to automate processing of operational data and thereby optimise predictive maintenance. New features are added regularly to the platform.