This is a project that will profoundly change habits in a suburb of Toulouse. And which, according to the first images shared with the inhabitants, will “revolutionize” the way in which the roads are not laid out in the Pink City.

By 2025, the main street Saint Michel, one of the historic streets of the Pink City, will indeed experience a real upheaval. And the first works should start in 2023, as for rue Croix Baragnon a few hectometres away.

8 million euros to change everything

The planned corresponding investment, nearly 8 million euros, will completely change the landscape of the main street, an avenue known until recent months for its intense road traffic and its heavily concreted public space. In short, a very cold street in winter and suffocating in summer.

Faced with this findingJonnhy Dunal, the neighborhood mayor, assured him a few months ago NewsToulousee :

“This development will not be a simple urban development, because we must think about the city of tomorrow, the one that we will leave to our children and grandchildren”.

The “maximum” project retained

This development is now known in its final version. It was presented to residents on Tuesday, December 6, 2022, during a public meeting.

It is the result of several months of reflection, balanced several planning hypotheses and taking stock of a one way street experimentation, started in March 2022, and which was extended to August. Here is what this project will change:

Jonnhy Dunal the emblem ad. It is the “maximum” project which was among the three hypotheses proposed for choosing the main rue Saint-Michel. That is to say the development proposed to the maximum the road network, the development proposing the most plantations and the one giving the most space to the cyclists and the pedestrians.

The planned layout

From rue Saint-Denis to place Lafourcade, a large part of the main rue Saint-Michel will remain one-way, from boulevard des Récollets to place Lafourcade.

This central highway will be used by vehicles and probably by a Lineo bus line, even if on this last point, discussions are still in progress. Thanks to the space recovered by the removal of certain parking spaces (about twenty spaces would be kept to access shops, editor’s note), and on the current roadway with the change to a single lane, it will be possible to create a two-way cycle path separated from road traffic, thus allowing a safe route for cyclists.

The change to a traffic lane will also allow green the street with the planting of 70 trees maximum and the 1000 m stripping² as shown in the summary image we share below.

Vegetation on each side of the street

To pay the mayor of Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc, “This project proposes a revaluation of the main street Saint-Michel, one of the most famous streets of Toulouse, but which is not very qualitative today”.

He pursues :

The revegetation effort will be very marked here with plantations on each side of the street and the establishment of a branch of the Réseau Express Vélo (REV), with a very qualitative infrastructure allowing a very clear separation between cyclists and contrary to what has been done on rue d’Alsace-Lorraine where the mixture of the two uses has resulted in pedestrian conflicts

Two meeting areas

The project for the main rue Saint-Michel also provides for the creation of “two peaceful meeting areas”: the “prison forecourt”, located in front of the former Saint-Michel prison, and the “Oasis du Cratère”, located in front of the Crater cinema.

“These will be shared areas set up in front of places, schools, cultural places, which bring life to the street, the animation. These comfort zones were not applied at the start of the project,” says Jonnhy Dunal.

The future meeting areas in pictures

Two years of work

Work will start in April or May 2023, for a period of two years. The target is for delivery in the summer of 2025.

They will require the stopping of the passage of buses of the Lineo 4 line.

The proposed layout could become a model for future street renovations in Toulouse. This is what the mayor of Toulouse thinks.

Duplicable in other suburbs?

“The audacity of this project is the reduction of the place of the car. We are aiming for a real calming of rue Saint-Michel, which will cease to be just a traffic axis. In the end, this will strengthen neighborhood life,” says Jean-Luc Moudenc, who therefore believes he can duplicate this model on other major streets in the Pink City:

“This project can give ideas elsewhere in other suburbs which are organized in the same way as Saint-Michel. This project can be a pioneer for the future”.

A city center that will change

Before possibly tackling the transformation of other suburban districts, a series of major works are starting up again in the city center of Toulouse.

Metz Street, Republic Street, rue Valade, rue Croix-Baragnon, avenue de Lyon, rue Saint-Michel… All of these areas will be subject to work in the coming months.

After the major transformations that concerned the rue d’Alsace-Loraine then the streets close to the Capitole in the early 2010s, after the work on rue Bayard, rue des Lois in 2016 and 2017 and especially the ramblas de Jean- Jaurès between 2016 and 2019, a new phase of major projects will start in Toulouse.

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