As part of its report on French rail transport in 2022, the French transport regulator ART found that the average age of the railway network will stabilise at 28.4 years, despite maintenance and repair measures and the deactivation of older line sections. This is almost three years ahead of the infrastructure operator SNCF Réseau's target of reducing the average age of the infrastructure to half its theoretical service life. Despite a 0.6% decrease in overall transport volume compared to 2019, the maintenance and monitoring of the railway network recorded a 6.9% decrease in operating costs over five years. The investments made by SNCF Réseau in 2022 are in line with the downward trend observed since 2015 and remain low in order to catch up with France's backlog in the deployment of certain equipment, such as the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) and centralised network control.
