Abstract
Transporting more goods by train is a leitmotif of transport policies since the 1990s, at the age of sustainable development. This thesis analyzes the formulations and recomposition of policy statements on rail freight in France and Germany between 1990 and 2010, through the study of four cases. Sustainable development has variously served reforming statements, sometimes legitimizing totally different measures. The German railway reform of 1994, in which the preservation of the environment was only one of the objectives, resulted after an extensive process of interessement and building a shared belief on the need for a major reform. The narrative on its success helped locking the statement, forcing those wishing to reform certain aspects of transport policy to redefine the problem of rail freight, particularly during the Masterplan (2007-2008), to propose new solutions. Sustainable development has otherwise been put forward in France under the Ministry Gayssot to legitimize public support to Fret SNCF. The struggling definitions of “sustainable transport” resulted in competing policy statements. These results encourage the study of argumentative struggles in the policy process, to trace its changes.