BEFORE AFTER. Toulouse. Here is your neighborhood with the 3rd metro line: François Verdier
By Guillaume Laurent
Published on
Addicted Colomiers a LabegeGoing through Toulouse Matabiauthe 3e metro line will be 27 kilometers long. While the project is expected for 2028 in the Pink City, the bulk of the work will really start at the end of 2022 with the civil engineering works.
All summerToulouse news you discover what your district should apply to, in a few years, after the establishment of the metro stations. 13e episode of the series: the station Francois Verdier.
What you need to know about François Verdier station:
Located in a district between Canal du Midi and the city center, Francois Verdier will be, with La Vache and Labège La Cadène, one of the three stations where you can branch off from the 3e line to line B.
Originally, it was to be located on the François Verdier alleys, but this option, which would have involved the felling of around fifty century-old plane trees, was ruled out. Tisséo decided to relocate it nearby. This future underground station will finally be dug… under the monument to the memory of veterans, called ” Memorial “ In Toulouse.
Before and after the arrival of the François Verdier station, here is what the neighborhood will look like:
A resort under fire from critics
It should be remembered that the location of this station had been the subject of strong criticism during the public debate. Collective Toulouse Metro-Politainvery active in the discussions, considered that “connecting TAE to line B at this location seems inappropriate”, considering in particular that it would vampirize traffic from surrounding stations on the other two lines, without allowing the extension of the pedestrian platform in the center – town.
But Tisséo stayed the course, judging on the contrary that François-Verdier constituted “one of the important transfer stations of the Toulouse network”, but also “a privileged access point to the city center, like the stations Jean-Jaurès and Matabiau”.
With 22,400 passengers per day at most, it should be the second most broadcast station on the network, behind Marengo-Matabiau (36,000).
Toulouse rivals Paris
Located at 35 meters underground, the François-Verdier station will be the deepest in the entire Toulouse metro network, and will rival the depths of the Paris metro, where the deepest station of the 16 lines is currently that of Abbesses, on line 12, 36 meters below the surface.
Jean-Michel Lattes, the president of Tisséo, had detailed that the 3e line would pass “about 10 meters below the existing tunnels to ensure the stability of the land”. But at François Verdier, the station will be even deeper, since it will also be… under the War Memorial, which will undergo a major construction site by domino effect.
The war memorial will be dismantled (and reassembled)!
As Tisséo had indicated to Toulouse news, building the 3e line will indeed lead to another titanic project: the complete dismantling of the war memorial, from the end of 2023. The building will then be restored and reassembled in the same place.
Three solutions had been affected: the dismantling and reassembly of the War Memorial during the work; reinforcement of the monument during construction to protect it from the risk of underground work; and finally shifting on rails, which consisted in a way of putting the monument on rails to move it. After technical studies carried out from the summer of 2021, it is therefore the first option that has been chosen.
The developments made at François Verdier:
With regard to the planned developments, if in the summer of 2021, Jean-Michel Lattes had indicated that the accesses to the current line B station could not be put to the service of the 3e line for technical reasons, Tisséo had then announced that if “the platforms and access corridors to the platforms” would indeed be “autonomous for the two lines”, flow studies have shown that it would be “possible to serve them subject to to resize the two existing emergences”, while respecting “drastic safety conditions”. Finally, to François Verdier, metro entrances will be shared and connection with line B will therefore be possible in the current ticket hall. UN connecting corridor will be set up there.
In its development project, Tisséo also provides for a “reorganization of spaces (…) in order to guarantee the continuity of pedestrian paths and rounds for access to the station”, and considers that “connections with the other modes should be optimized thanks to possible movements of bus stops existing”.
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