Les chemins de fer ne peuvent, bien évidemment, être synonymes de transport de longue distance comme ils l’étaient au XIXe siècle, mais ils doivent constituer un maillon essentiel d’une chaîne comprenant tous les modes de transport - air, route, mer, voies fluviales et rail.
The railways, of course, cannot be synonymous with long-distance transport as they were in the nineteenth century, but they should be an important link in a chain comprising all the modes of transport – air, road, sea, waterway and rail.