[9] French transport

Transport systems have long been vital to France, serving to unite the nation in an administrative sense while promoting the growth of regional economies and linking the country to the rest of Europe and to the world. Paris has always been the hub* of French transportation.

The Industrial Revolution brought innovations in transportation to France. For example, a complex system of canals was built, connecting many navigable rivers and providing low-cost water transport for products of the mines and factories.

The railroad age began while the canal-building era was at its height. The first French line began operating in 1827, between St.-Étienne and Andrézieux, and steel rails soon linked most parts of the country. By 1934 France had 33,282 miles (53,561 kilometers) of railways. Most of the main lines were built in a radial pattern**, with Paris at the center, thus reinforcing the importance of the capital. Paris continued to grow and prosper at a remarkable rate because people had difficulty traveling between any two points in France without passing through the capital. Also, rail lines made it easier for rural people displaced by the Industrial Revolution to migrate to Paris than to any other city.

The appearance of the automobile just before 1900, and the airplane a few years later, added new perspectives to transportation. Highways, duplicating the earlier railway patterns, radiated in all directions from Paris, and the distance to any point in France was calculated from the front steps of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Air transportation to and from the airfield at Le Bourget, near Paris, began in 1919.

Today, French transportation systems are changing to cope with three problems: rapid technological change, the obsolete condition of many earlier systems, and increasing pressure to reduce the dependency of the entire country on Paris. Although lagging behind several other European countries, France has, since about 1960, embarked on a major program of superhighway construction. Many of the new highways have necessarily duplicated the older ones centered on Paris, but engineers have made great efforts to enable travelers to go to and from other parts of France without passing through the capital.

Rail traffic has declined, as it has in nearly every country, but is still important in France. The high-speed TGV travels between Paris and Lyon in only two hours, compared with four hours for conventional service, and the TGV service is being expanded to other lines as well. Air travel has also increased enormously. Traffic at Paris is divided among the airport at Orly, south of the city, and Charles de Gaulle, to the northeast, in Roissy. With Le Bourget, which today handles only charter flights, these airports accommodated a total of about 30 million passengers per year in the early 1980s, making Paris the second busiest European air travel center after London. Paris is also the airfreight capital of Europe, handling about 625,000 tons of cargo in 2001. Other major international airports include those at Marseilles, Nice, Lyon, Lille, and Strasbourg.

Notes: *hub – центр

**radial pattern – радиальная схема