- Réseau Ferré de France
Infobox Company
company_name = Réseau Ferré de France
company_
company_type =state-owned company
foundation =1998
location_city = Ave. de France, Paris
location_country = France
area_served =France
industry = Infrastructure & Tracks Proprietor, State Administrator
parent = Ministère du Transport
homepage = [http://www.rff.fr/ www.rff.fr]:"RFF are also the initials of the
Ricardo Franco Front , aColombian revolutionary guerrilla group; for other uses, seeRFF .Réseau Ferré de France, "RFF", (literally "Iron Network of France") is the company that owns and maintains the French national
railway network. The trains themselves are operated bySNCF , the national railway company, but due to newEuropean Union rules, theFrench government was required to separate train operations from the railway infrastructure.Overview
The RFF was constituted with SNCF's infrastructure assets, and debts were transferred from the SNCF book to RFF's. Currently, the RFF is mainly a financial structure focusing on debt refinancing, and it contractually delegates the majority of its infrastructure management to the SNCF. In the future, it is expected to be capable of building, maintaining and renovating the French national railway infrastructure on its own. Signalling on RFF infrastructure is implemented and maintained by SNCF.
The creation of RFF was criticised because of the financial options chosen: RFF is subsidised by the French government in order to pay the interest on debt previously borne by the SNCF. SNCF now has a positive operating income and thus enables competition to be opened. The creation of the RFF structure was dismissed by political opponents and some economists as a move to liberalise French railways at the taxpayer's expense. Another criticism is that RFF's policy of "stopping losses" is that it hampers the investment capacities of the French rail system.Fact|date=December 2007
External links
* [http://www.rff.fr RFF official website]
* [http://eiro.eurofound.europa.eu/1997/02/inbrief/fr9702113n.html European Union SNCF brief]
* [http://www.senat.fr/rap/r02-303/r02-303.html French Senate report on transport infrastructure]References
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