Thread by @jonworth

Earlier this week I investigated the Givet 🇫🇷 - Dinant 🇧🇪 #CrossBorderRail missing link

This old route along the Meuse is a wonderful area, and it’d be excellent if trains could run here once more

But why is it so hard my old friend @anthonyzach asked me? The 🧵 answers this!

First, where is this line? These maps show the area.

Breaking it down in rail terms there are 3 sections:
Charleville-Mezieres - Givet (⚫️ on map - 63km, active double track, diesel)
Givet - Anseremme (gap on map - 22km, not active, was single track, diesel)
Anseremme - Dinant (🔵 on map - 2km, active double track, electrified)

The history of the line can be found here fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_154…

The last passenger trains Givet-Dinant ran in 1989, and then some freight and museum trains ran until 2000, and then the Givet-Anseremme section of the line was finally abandoned

Before we come to the technicalities of *how* to rebuild the line, a more fundamental question: WHO would benefit from the re-opening of the line?

The towns on the Belgian side of the border are obviously better off than those on the French side, and the towns between Charleville-Mezieres and Givet would probably benefit more from a connection to Belgium than the Belgian towns would from a connection to France

Dinant is also a closer regional centre - notably for hospitals - for Givet than Charleville-Mezieres is, and the EU has a bunch of projects in the region to finance this cross border cooperation, but the rail line is still missing

On the Belgian side too there are questions. Dinant is a popular destination for day trippers from Brussels, and has a whole tourist industry based on that. Make it easier to reach the villages further along the river, and would Dinant even suffer a little?

It suffices to say here it is not *clear* exactly who benefits (although the overall benefit of re-activation of the line would be positive). Perhaps more importantly *not everyone benefits equally*

The sort of nimby objections to the reactivation of the line ought to be surmountable - the line goes right through a couple of villages, and notably in Wauslort some people are not going to especially appreciate a train at the end of their garden, but I have seen much worse

But then 🥁 let’s get to the technicalities...

And this is where it gets very tricky

Of the 22km that would need to be re-activated, 2km are in France and 20km are in Belgium. This means greater costs in terms of re-construction, and maintenance, Belgian side

And then comes the question: WHAT do you re-build exactly?

OPTION 1 - re-build the line to the standard it was when it closed - single track, not electrified - that would be the cheapest and easiest option…

… but that does not suit the Belgians *at all*, because they have a strategy of electrifying pretty much everything. There are no diesel passenger trains any more anywhere in southern Belgium.

You could extend the Charleville - Givet diesel trains to Dinant, but then you’re going to have a battle to get Wallonia to subsidise a French train operation.

Instead you could go for OPTION 2 - re-activate and electrify the line.

That is going to increase the costs of re-activation of the line, but would simplify operations. Hourly Bruxelles-Dinant ⚡️ trains could then simply be extended to Givet, and passengers would change there

But option 2, while operationally simple, is not super handy for passengers, who would still have to change at Givet.

So how about OPTION 3: re-activate and electrify Dinant - Givet, AND electrify Givet - Charleville-Mezieres?

That would then open up the potential for through trains - Charlville-Mezieres to Dinant, or even Reims to Namur.

But re-activating 20km, and electrifying a total of more than 80km… and costs are starting to get high!

And add onto all of this the issue that Belgium and France have problems with their cross border connections in general - another service (Mons-Aulnoye) is even closing later this year.

What hope, really, that these two countries succeed here, while they are failing elsewhere?

So that is why Givet 🇫🇷 - Dinant 🇧🇪 is hard to solve. It’s not that the project does not make sense (it obviously does), but it is a question about who benefits (and can countries set narrow interests aside), and then how exactly to do it.

/ends