the department of Gironde refuses to participate in its financing
The Gironde departmental council decided on Monday, November 22 not to finance the LGV Sud-Ouest project but to instead contribute to local railways. He was asked for a commitment of 281 million euros.
Clearly, nothing is simple, in the high-speed line (LGV) project between Toulouse and Bordeaux.
While the Occitanie region has completed its funding with 16 contributing communities, it creaks on the side of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in certain communities requested, such as Lot-et-Garonne or the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, which assesses that the requested contribution is too much. important. And now the department of Gironde announces this Monday, November 22, 2021 that it will not participate in the financing, preferring instead to contribute to the improvement of the local rail network.
Develop local rail
The departmental council, located to the left of the political spectrum and to which a commitment of 281 million euros was requested for the LGV, adopted, by a large majority, a deliberation on the creation of a “competition funds for the development of local railway lines“of 170 million euros in order to”stimulate startup“from an RER”metropolitan” Where “girondin“with Bordeaux metropolis.
“The department wishes to focus its efforts only on daily transport“, explained in plenary session Jean-Luc Gleyze, its president PS.
He also specified that the department would not join the local public establishment to be set up in 2022 to finance the LGV Sud-Ouest and would also ensure that its money is not used by Bordeaux Métropole to finance the Improvements. Bordeaux South Railway (AFSB), a component of the high-speed line (LGV) project.
“Insane project”
This question of the financing of the LGV Sud-Ouest is already dividing the left-wing majority in Bordeaux metropolis, where the socialist Alain Anziani wants to allocate about 350 million euros to the GPSO (large South-West rail project) when his ally Europe- Ecology-The Greens Pierre Hurmic, Mayor of Bordeaux, demands that this sum only contributes to improving “daily trains“around the metropolis.
The LGV is a “crazy project“, Recently denounced the ecologist councilor, to whom the PS president of Occitania, Carole Delga, criticized her” small egoisms “.
Tripartite funding
The total cost of the LGV, which provides for two new high-speed lines to save an hour’s journey between Bordeaux and Toulouse and twenty minutes between Bordeaux and Dax, as an extension of the LGV already between Paris and Bordeaux, is 14.3 billion. , 40% of which will be covered by the State, which will release 4.1 billion for the Bordeaux-Toulouse line, 40% by local authorities in the New Aquitaine and Occitanie regions and 20% by the European Union.
Monday in a press release published at the end of the afternoon, the CEO of SNCF Jean-Pierre Farandou and the PS president of New Aquitaine Alain Rousset assured with Carole Delga, the president of Occitanie, that, without the GPSO, the metropolitan RER in Bordeaux “could not see the light of day” and “the great southwest of France would eventually be marginalized“.
According to them, the LGV will offer “considerable time savings for users“, will allow “an increase in the number of daily trains“and will develop”rail freight on the atlantic arc“, in particular when the connection of the Spanish network to the European gauge at the French border at the level of the Basque Country will be completed.