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The assertion of suburban railway services (Services Express Métropolitains in French) to serve metropolitan areas represents a unique opportunity to analyze changes in public policy applied to transport, and more specifically to railway systems. This article looks at changes in the railways’ policy paradigm for structuring daily journeys in the living areas of France’s main conurbations. Starting with a national historical then Lyon region overview, the analysis highlights the progressive evolution of the stakeholders and their fields of action, and notably based on local initiatives that were for a long time limited by industrial and technical specificities, as well as by historical under-investment in the national rail network._x000D_ Finally, the article highlights the current technical impossibility of improving rail services without building the infrastructures that have been requested for several decades.