A 80km high speed railway for freight and passengers which forms part of the Mediterranean High Speed Link. In operation since 2017

Background

The Nîmes-Montpellier Bypass (CNM) Project is a 25-year contract for a new 80-kilometre section of railway for both freight and passenger traffic between Nîmes and Montpellier. It is an extension of the Mediterranean High-Speed Link which was commissioned in 2001.

The line has been developed for several reasons:

• serving both passenger and freight rail services,
• adding substantial capacity to the existing east-west transport corridor,
• bypassing the cities of Nîmes and Montpellier, and
• serving as an extension to a strategic rail route from Barcelona to Avignon and beyond.

OC’Via, the Project Company, signed the 25-year PPP contract with SNCF Réseau, a government entity which owns the national French railway network.

The infrastructure was commissioned in 2017, on schedule. In 2019, Meridiam increased its ownership from 53% to 73% by acquiring the shares of the industrial partners.

Stage:

In Operation

ESG/SDG Key Facts

A five-year partnership with France Active and Airdie was launched in 2017 to develop a programme of micro-credit (“Cap’Jeune”) to foster job creation in neighbouring regions for young entrepreneurs. 80 entrepreneurs have benefited from this programme.

This first partnership was replaced in December 2020 by a more ambitious one with France Active Airdie and the Conservatoire d’Espaces Naturels (CEN), to promote local organic farming. This new project named TerrAES provides support to the partner municipalities on various critical tasks: biodiversity diagnosis, capitalisation work on existing communal livestock building projects, and technical and methodological support in terms of project engineering for the implementation of a call for applications.

In Q4 2022, TerrAES selected a candidate (out of 11) for the development of a goat farm (rearing and cheese production) in Trèves (Gard). Another call for application was also launched in Q4 2022 for the installation of 2 to 3 small agricultural exploitations in Gigean (Herault). Other territories are being studied for the development of agriculture and breeding, so CNM has decided to extend the partnership till 2025.

In June 2021, the Maintainer achieved a triple ISO certification: 9001 (Quality), 14001 (Environment Management System) and 45001 (Security and Health). In June 2022, the Maintainer obtained the renewal of the triple ISO certification.

> Learn more about the project:

Nîmes Montpellier High Speed Rail Line

Launch of the First commercial freight train on the CNM (Nîmes-Montpellier Bypass)