Will the new metro line be really green?
With its 27 km, its 21 stations between Labège and Colomiers and its cost of 2.8 billion euros, the third metro line Toulouse is one of the largest infrastructure projects underway in France. This colossal project dates from 2014 and its commissioning was first announced for 2024 before being postponed for the time being to the end of 2028.
The famous Toulouse Aerospace Express (TAE) line passes the final administrative stages. With notably the environmental public inquiry on its impact, closed to the public since January 28 but which gave rise to a fairly lively extraordinary municipal council on Tuesday. Its undisputed star, although absent, was the group of “city makers”. This group of engineers asserts in its
study published online that Tisséo underestimated the site’s carbon footprint. Official documents report 200,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCo2eq) emitted during the works, i.e. “1% of total metropolitan emissions”. Based on a methodology called Carboptimum, used for the Grand Paris Express line, city planners point out that elements of the site have been forgotten and calculate that its impact will be two and a half times greater.
Political calculations?
To this reproach, Maxime Boyer, deputy in charge of soft modes, ensures that the impact, which is based in the survey on data from 2018, will be recalculated throughout the construction site and at its end. More fierce, the mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc (LR) questions the objectivity of the collective. He points out that some of its members campaigned for the current opposition. “They put forward figures contesting ours but how do you expect me to put them on the same level as our engineers? “, he asks.
The second criticism of the collective relates to the virtues of the project. Investigation documents claim that the line avoided 73,000 daily car trips, or 531,000 km of travel per day. A figure different from that of 250,000 km stopped daily advanced on its site by Tisséo “There are just several studies determined on different perimeters”, rectifies Jean-Michel Lattes, its president.
In addition, City Makers criticize Tisséo for having considered that cars will never be less polluting, ignoring the ongoing modernization of the car fleet. Maxime Boyer affirms that this evolution has been taken into account at least until 2030. He also recalls that the metro remains 10 times less polluting than an electric car, 100 times less than a thermal car while the collective considers that the carbon footprint of the TAE line will “never be positive”
The majority at #Toulouse completely freestyle. We’re talking about environmental study in council and the answer is: “we don’t really know but we’ll do the calculations at the end”.😳😨 https://t.co/pFmXE7iFjH
— Maxime Le TEXIER // 🅜🅐🅧 (@maxletex) February 8, 2022
This quarrel between experts will be decided by the commissioner-investigator, whose opinion will only be advisory. In hollow, the main reserve of the opposition on the TAE remains the same. Without questioning the project, she still doubts its completion date and criticizes it for using up most of the credits available until 2030. “It’s as if we were using 90% of a family’s budget to buy a electric bike that can be used once every three months”, summarizes the elected representative of the Archipelago Maxime Le Texier. Jean-Luc Moudenc denounces for his part “the enormous ambiguity, not to say the hypocrisy, of opponents who fight the third line without really assuming it”. Regarding the calendar, Jean-Michel Lattes describes it as “demanding” but “realistic”.