Réseau Ferré de France (RFF) has selected an Icade-led group to develop the new "Montpellier - Sud de France" TGV station through a public-private partnership (PPP) project.

The station is scheduled for delivery in the 4th quarter of 2017 and will be a multimodal exchange centre in the Odysséum district. It is located on the new high-speed line running between Nîmes and Montpellier.

Icade is the project owner of the project along with the Caisse des Dépôts, DIF, Edifice Capital, COFELY, GDF Suez and Fondeville.

The architects, Marc Mimram and Emmanuel Nebout, and EGIS, are the main project contractors, the construction companies in charge are Fondeville and INEO-AXIMA, and the maintenance supplier is COFELY Services.

The partnership contract between the project owner and the RFF will be signed at end-2014 for a 15-year period.

The project is part of the Contournement Nîmes-Montpellier, a high-speed railway project, bypassing the cities of Nîmes and Montpellier in southern France. The line is planned for mixed-use, by both TGV trains and freight, connecting to the LGV Méditerranée and extending it southwest towards the LGV Perpignan-Figueres.

The main line will be 60 km long, plus a 10 km connection to rail freight lines West of the Rhone river, and three more spurs connecting to existing railways at Jonquières, Lattes, and Manduel.