Shaping the Future of Mobility Finance in France

In July 2025, the Ambition France Transports (French Transport Ambition) Conference, convened by France’s Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Sovereignty, will come to a close.

This landmark initiative aims to design a new, fit-for-purpose financing model that addresses the evolving needs of France’s transport ecosystem.

In the run up to the Conference, stakeholders were invited to submit written contributions with their perspectives on financing priorities and strategies for French transport and mobility infrastructure. Nearly 180 submissions were made.

Leveraging advanced Large Language Modelling (LLM) tools, Frontier Economics has analysed these contributions to uncover key insights across the broad set of stakeholder submissions, shedding light on emerging trends and priorities in the sector.

Who responded?

The consultation attracted responses from across the transport and mobility landscape including rail, road, shipping, active mobility and cross-sector stakeholders:

Around half of all submissions came from rail sector stakeholders

Nearly one third were contributed by road transport actors

The remainder came from the shipping and active mobility stakeholders, together with cross-sector participants such as local authorities and other public bodies.

What challenges do they identify?

To frame the July discussions, the Conference organisers pre-identified three critical challenges as focal points:

Regenerating and modernising transport network infrastructure

Expanding transportation options to meet rising mobility demands and support territorial planning

Accelerating the ecological transition of mobility services

Of these, the Frontier LLM finds that regeneration and modernisation of transport networks emerged as the most frequently discussed issue across the submissions.

However, the emphasis varied significantly by sector:

Rail stakeholders most often highlighted the need for network regeneration. The second priority was expanding transport options, whereas road stakeholders gave equal weight to green transition efforts as network regeneration.

The shipping sector placed the highest emphasis on accelerating the ecological transition, followed by network regeneration.

Active mobility stakeholders focused exclusively on the green transition, reflecting their strong alignment with sustainable transport goals.

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These insights highlight the complexity of France’s transport landscape. The financing strategy emerging from the Conference will need to carefully balance national objectives – such as sustainability and territorial cohesion – with the distinct priorities of each sector.

How have we used data science for this analysis?

At Frontier, we combine cutting edge data science with economic expertise to turn data into insight.

To generate the results in this article and accompanying interactive site, we used a Large Language Model (LLM) for document parsing and topic-classification to converted hundreds of PDF consultation responses into a structured dataset. With that in hand, we were able to distil quantitative insights from qualitative text, and serve them through an interactive dashboard that lets users explore who is championing which priorities for France’s future transport network.

You can find the detailed methodology steps on the analysis Github site, found here.

Check out our Data Science capabilities here.