SNCF Réseau is the infrastructure manager of the French national rail network, responsible for allocating paths, setting and collecting track access charges, and maintaining, renewing and developing the network. It is a subsidiary of the SNCF group and manages close to 28,000 km of line.
The company took its present form on 1 January 2015, when Réseau Ferré de France was merged with SNCF’s infrastructure maintenance and traffic control functions into a single manager. SNCF Réseau became a public limited company inside the restructured SNCF group on 1 January 2020, together with its own subsidiary SNCF Gares & Connexions, which runs the stations.
The network divides into roughly 15,000 km of conventional line connecting medium-sized and large cities, about 7,600 km of lower-density lines serving the wider territory, and the high-speed lines. Physical assets include some 120,000 engineering structures, among them 28,000 railway bridges and 1,500 tunnels.
Independence is the operating constraint
The company performs the essential functions of an infrastructure manager — path allocation and charging — for a network its own group also runs trains on. SNCF Voyageurs is a sister company under the same holding, not the owner of the network.
Directive 2012/34/EU requires those functions to be exercised independently of any railway undertaking, including one inside the same group. Trenitalia France and Renfe both run high-speed services on the national network, and regional public service contracts are now tendered.
Oversight sits with the Autorité de régulation des transports, the national regulator, which rules on access disputes and on the charging framework. Its remit extends to the appointment of the company’s chief executive, on which it issues a formal opinion.
Renewal, digitalisation and capacity
The central problem is asset age. Decades of underinvestment left much of the conventional network needing renewal rather than maintenance, and the volume of work now competes directly with the demand for more train paths.
Digital signalling is the structural response. Deploying ERTMS and concentrating traffic control in a small number of command centres is central to the company’s plans for handling more trains without building new line.
Matthieu Chabanel has led the company since October 2022 and was reappointed by the board in June 2026, after a favourable opinion from the regulator. The mandate runs for four years.