Activity:
Línea Figueras Perpignan S.A. is an Infrastructure Manager or “IM” according to the European directive 2001/14/CE.
Its area of responsibility covers the mixed-traffic high-speed line between Figueres (Spain) and Perpignan (France), also known as “International Section”. It is an interoperable line, designed to allow the simultaneous and unrestricted operations of high-speed trains and freight trains. Although the coexistence of slow and fast moving trains might seems easy to achieve, in reality it requires deep safety analysis, exhaustive procedures and a high-level operations organisation.
In a general way, LFP’ core activity is the management of the infrastructure that includes capacity allocation known as “paths” or “slots”, trains’ traffic management and regulation, maintenance of the infrastructure and of course safety management.
In parallel, LFP also elaborates and publishes technical documents and defines the rolling stock admission conditions.
Other additional services are offered to the Railway Undertakings as well, such as trains’, locomotives or wagons stabling, shunting, traction power supply or use of workshops.
LFP collects the tolls from the users of the line.
In most cases, users are national and private Railway Undertakings, but it can also be any other company or legal entity having commercial or public service reasons to acquire transport capacity in the line.
The line is cross-border. Not only it connects two countries, France and Spain, but also two rail networks, SNCF Réseau and ADIF, having different standards and features. This particularity gives a specific binational character to LFP and requires a daily coordination with both bordering networks.