Rail – Voie d'eau, une combinaison contre-nature ? La desserte ferroviaire des ports franciliens et ses développements potentiels

As mass transport vector, waterways and railroad transport are considered as fierce competitors with economical relations that may hare led to destructive situations in the past. However, both are nowadays regarded as increasingly complementary offers. This new situation is to be considered with an increasing interest by major freight operators on the Seine and claimed as desirable by river port authorities. The combination of alternative modes to road haulage is also strongly encouraged by national and European authorities. They all have the ambition to develop river ports as multimodal hubs along major transport corridors while promoting the requirements for a challenging environmental sustainability and a credible answer to the risks of saturation of the infrastructures. The aim of the paper is to present and to evaluate the possible development of new rail-river transport combination in inner ports in the Greater Paris, a perspective that has not been systematically analyzed so far.