LGV Bordeaux – Toulouse: for the prefect Etienne Guyot, “not a train for wealth but a train for all”
Etienne Guyot is Prefect of Occitanie and the coordinator of the Bordeaux-Toulouse and Bordeaux-Dax high-speed line projects.
What do you say to those who still oppose the high speed line (LGV) between Bordeaux and Toulouse?
The Bordeaux-Toulouse line has been declared of public interest. All the studies, inquiries and opinions, in particular that of the environmental authority, up to the Council of State which issued the declaration of public utility, concluded that the advantages of the project outweighed the disadvantages. This is the public utility! It is now a decided debate. Now we are in the realization.
What will the LGV change for travelers?
They will be much more numerous thanks to this new line. Estimates put it at seven million by the number of additional passengers. The majority of this additional traffic comes from the regional level with four million internal journeys in New Aquitaine and Occitanie. The corollary is a reduction in air travel by 20% and 4.3 million car trips avoided! And by 2040, 7.7 million fewer car trips and two million air passengers are switching to the train.
What is the carbon footprint of traveling by TGV?
On a Paris-Toulouse, an air passenger emits 130 kg of CO2 compared to 40 kg by car and only four kg by TGV. In addition, the modal shift of passengers in favor of the train will save 325,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Yannick Jadot (EELV) said the LGV between Bordeaux and Toulouse will only gain 20 minutes
The reality is that the LGV will cut in half the journey time between Toulouse and Bordeaux, which will save an hour’s journey in Paris to just over 3 hours from Toulouse. All passengers benefit from it and 65% of TGV passengers travel for leisure and personal reasons and 25% for professional reasons. The TGV is not a train for wealth but for backpacks and vacationers.
How many TGVs will link Toulouse to Paris?
The construction of the LGV will allow us to create additional lines. From Toulouse, it will seize TGV including 25% of Ouigo per day against only seven today. Between Paris and Montauban, we will go from five daily TGV to thirteen and from four to seven between Tarbes and Paris. The whole territory will benefit from the high-speed air intake.
The whole of the country will benefit from the LGV’s air draw.
What about everyday trains, the TER?
The construction site which will begin will allow the development of new railway nodes to the south of Bordeaux and to the north of Toulouse. In Bordeaux, it is a twelve kilometer project with the creation of a third and a fourth track. In Toulouse, this concerns 17 kilometers of tracks between Matabiau station and Castelnau-d’Estrétefonds with station improvements to remove the bottleneck. These essential improvements to the LGV will serve daily trains which will see their frequency increase. During rush hour, between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. and between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. between Toulouse and Castelnau-d’Estretefonds, there will be a rhythm every quarter of an hour in both directions. During the day it will be ten round trips or twenty circulations. This also applies to the outer suburbs since between Toulouse and Montauban the objective is to have five round trips per day at peak times.
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What is this special LGV tax that will be applied to the tax forms?
The local communities have requested that the LGV finance company can receive a designated tax which will be subtracted from their contribution. The government has accepted the creation of a special equipment tax which will be additional to the property tax. This will only represent a few euros per year.
Who are the inhabitants who will pay for it?
These are residents located an hour by car from a station served by the LGV. We still have to do precise zoning.
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Bordeaux-Toulouse LGV: a special tax will be created on tax forms in January 2023
Who will take the place of a community that does not wish to pay its share to the LGV?
For Occitanie, it’s complete. In Nouvelle-Aquitaine, discussions are continuing and I hope that they will continue ardently because the finance company must be created later in April 2022, which requires the communities to have deliberated at the end of December 2021. It is up to the communities to agree on the distribution of their 40% funding.
If the Lot-et-Garonne does not contribute, will the TGV stop in Agen?
For the moment the declaration of public utility provides for a station in Agen. Pour the moment …