LGV Bordeaux-Toulouse: last votes in New Aquitaine, negotiations continue
Crucial step for the Toulouse-Bordeaux LGV this week. Several local communities in Nouvelle-Aquitaine must each vote on its funding.
The financing of the high-speed line project depending from Bordeaux to Toulouse and Dax is about to be completed in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, where the last local authorities vote. But the project is not accepted everywhere and negotiations are going well to avoid funding shortfalls. This Monday December 13, it will be up to the Region to deliberate in plenary session, before the agglomeration community of Dax (Landes) on Tuesday December 14, the Pyrénées-Atlantiques council and the agglomeration community of Agen on Thursday December 16, then the Basque Country agglomeration community on Saturday December 18.
Recognizing “concerns” and “dead ends” to complete the funding, the PS president of Nouvelle-Aquitaine Alain Rousset called on Friday, in front of the press, “to solidarity and responsibility”.
“You can’t have a historic chance and at the same time procrastinate, it’s a question of responsibility,” he said. Same appeal from Geneviève Darrieussecq, regional councilor and member of the government, evoking a “historic moment” for the region.
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Because time is running out. The ordinance which will make it possible to create the finance company must be priced by April 2022, after a passage before the Council of State. The financing plan should be finalized by the end of the year.
Mentioned since 1991 but remained in the works for a long time, this Grand Projet du Sud-Ouest (GPSO) was resuscitated with the arrival of Jean Castex in Matignon, to the great joy of the Occitanie Region, which again called for “solidarity” on Friday. territorial ”.
As an extension of the Paris-Bordeaux LGV, it provides for the creation of two new lines, to Toulouse and Dax. The first will save an hour of travel, putting the 4th largest city in France three hours from Paris in 2030, and 20 minutes for Dax.
The site, estimated at 14 billion euros, will be financed up to 40% by the State, which will release 4.1 billion for the Bordeaux-Toulouse line but has not yet committed to Bordeaux-Dax. The communities – regions, departments and agglomerations of Occitanie and New Aquitaine – should share the funding of 40%, the remaining 20% being supplemented by European funds. In total, more than 1.7 billion euros must be provisioned solely because of the neo-Aquitaine communities.
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Phones heat up
If in Occitanie, the game was quickly made, it is not in Nouvelle-Aquitaine where some of them have triggered brakes so far of the four irons. Because of the four departments concerned, Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Landes, only the latter has not been reluctant to put his hand in his pocket.
Lot-et-Garonne and Gironde have both said no “to any” financial participation, preferring to focus their efforts on “daily trains”.
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The Gironde has thus voted a “competition fund for the development of local rail lines” of 170 million euros in order to “stimulate the start-up” of a “metropolitan” RER with Bordeaux Métropole.
For its part, the metropolis of Bordeaux has validated its participation of 354 million euros, but by “pointing” towards the development of 12 km of lines south of Bordeaux, hoping to create this local RER thanks to the new LGV lines. .
Very hostile to this new LGV for the protection of the environment, the ecologists, through the voice of the mayor EELV of Bordeaux Pierre Hurmic, denounced “a” crazy project “and” anachronistic “. But for some elected officials, it is the too salty slate that makes people creak. “Communities are negotiating for a million while we are talking about an infrastructure that will last 200 years,” storms a source familiar with the matter.
Behind the scenes, the phone is heating up and negotiations are going well. President Rousset took out the calculator: “out of the 14 billion, there is an impasse of 150 million euros” (estimated). Nothing “insurmountable”, he says, warning that the Region does not play firefighter.