Guillaume Pepy visited Japan and China in June to draw inspiration and ideas from Asian innovations

High-tech Japan
The annual conference of the UIC (International Union of Railways), of which the SNCF is a member, was a great opportunity for Guillaume Pepy to take a Japanese train and get a feel for where their railway industry is at. He wanted to find out about everything from sales systems to control and information - and he came away with eyes opened to the integration of new technology for transport. Contactless cards (like the Navigo travel pass in Paris) are used for in-station or on-train purchases (coffee, newspaper); bar-coded luggage labels and rotating seats are in common usage. Some of these ideas may one day turn up on your TGV train.

High-speed China
The Chairman took the new Chinese high-speed train as a tourist, and got a feel of the expected passenger numbers by looking at the size of the stations. Guangzhou South station already boasts six of its planned 28 platforms. The SNCF knows this market well. Its subsidiary Arep has already built three large stations, including in Shanghai, and is well-placed to work on new projects. The growth of high-speed rail in China has been phenomenal. The first high-speed line, between Beijing and Guangzhou was opened in 2008. Just one year later, a second line opened between Wuhan and Guangzhou (a similar distance to Lille-Marseille). On 1 July 2010, a 350 kph service started running on the Shanghai-Nanjing Intercity Railway (301 km). China currently boasts 4,000 km of high-speed track, and is set to have the largest network in the world by the end of 2010, the largest fleet of trains by 2015, and 50,000 km of high-speed lines in 2020 at a total investment cost of €400 billion.