Regulate the operator, not the category: an asymmetric approach to rail maintenance facilities

Access to maintenance facilities is now a decisive condition for competition in passenger rail. A new entrant cannot operate rolling stock that it cannot maintain. European law nonetheless treats these facilities uniformly, presuming that maintenance centres should be regulated whoever runs them. Eight years of market analysis at the Autorité de régulation des transports (ART) point the other way. Obligations should track the incentives of the operator running a facility, not the category of the facility.

A method from electronic communications: maintenance centres can be essential facilities

Inspired by the periodic market analysis used to regulate electronic communications and postal services, in 2018 ART ran its own market test on every service-facility category. At the time, maintenance centres were seen as replicable infrastructure that operators could build for themselves, and so deserved little regulatory attention. The test told a different story. Especially in passenger services, maintenance centres can qualify as essential facilities. Sharing is limited, third-party services are scarce and facility holders have little commercial incentive to serve competitors.

Asymmetry should follow operator incentives, not facility categories

Asymmetry is therefore not only about which facilities to regulate, but about who operates them. A specialised independent maintainer has no incentive to discriminate, since third-party customers are its business. A maintainer attached to an incumbent operator will be more inclined to favour its own trains. The current directive presumes that all maintenance centres should be regulated whoever runs them. The presumption should run the other way and target operators that have market power. High-speed passenger maintenance and freight illustrate why, and they require opposite treatments.

High-speed passenger maintenance requires regulated access to the incumbent’s centres

In high-speed, building a new maintenance site is a long-term target not an entry strategy, so competition depends on access to the centres the incumbent already has. Suitable sites are scarce – they need tracks, a location near the stations where rolling stock rotates and a network connection – and permits are slow. For example, the Marcheprime site near Bordeaux took eight years from the start of the project to delivery. As market entry already costs around a billion euros, mostly for rolling stock, with a maintenance centre a substantial further cost, a new entrant cannot wait for its own facility. The regulatory framework must therefore impose access under FRAND conditions to the incumbent’s existing centres during the ramp-up and access that remains useful afterwards for unscheduled repairs and logistics.

Rail freight maintenance requires a lighter regulatory touch

In freight, by contrast, the market has already organised itself into a competitive ecosystem. Railway undertakings have built their own centres, manufacturers and specialised players have entered and each operator relies on one or two preferred sites while turning to others for breakdowns or specialised operations such as wheelset reprofiling. These sites are easier to duplicate and the overriding priority is competitiveness against road. Over-regulating the market would add cost and rigidity for no competitive gain, so a lighter touch is appropriate.

The French toolkit pairs broad access with predictable incentive-based pricing

Two instruments give this regulatory approach practical effect. The first is a comprehensive reference offer. ART progressively required SNCF Voyageurs to open up the full range of installations and in-facility services so that competitors can operate autonomously. It works in practice. Trenitalia now uses the SNCF Voyageurs centres in France. The second is predictable incentive-based tariff regulation. With existing centres close to saturation, new greenfield facilities must be able to emerge, sometimes with private finance and a different economic profile – a high upfront cost, no asset base and uncertain revenue. Pricing guidelines published in 2025 aim at once to reassure users, secure project developers and open the market. The outcome was concrete. In April 2026, LISEA, the Tours-Bordeaux concessionaire, obtained around €266 million of long-term project finance for the Marcheprime centre – an independent multi-operator facility, the first of its kind in France.

The way forward: periodic market analysis, as in telecommunications

The most durable answer is not a horizontal rule regulating every facility, but the telecommunications model: periodic market analyses in which the regulator decides which remedies to impose, on whom and at what intensity. As in telecoms, this can be paired with a short list of markets regulated by default for operators holding significant market power – high-speed passenger maintenance is the obvious candidate. This delivers what a one-size-fits-all rule cannot: firm regulation in which market power sits light where the market works. Capacity is the next frontier. Constraints are emerging at the nodes of the system, maintenance centres among them. The United Kingdom’s Temple Mills case is instructive. Rather than accept the incumbent’s claim that no capacity remained, the regulator commissioned an independent study and weighed rival applications against a multi-criteria grid before granting access. France faces the same questions. ART has invited SNCF Voyageurs to assess and publish the capacity of its strategic sites, with studies underway, notably at Le Landy on the Paris-London axis, and the results are due by the end of 2026. In the Single European Railway Area these questions are cross-border. What one facility allows on one side shifts the burden to the other.

Conclusion

Asymmetry is not complexity for its own sake: it follows incentives. Regulate the operator whose incentives point to discrimination, keep a light touch where the market works and – given the investment at stake – keep firm access regulation of facilities held by operators with market power for as long as the market remains immature. On this condition, maintenance facilities can support rather than constrain European high-speed ambition.