Why between Toulouse and Albi, the A68 is the cheapest motorway in France: the reason is unknown
Through David Saint-Sernin
Published on
The A 68 motorway Between Toulouse and Albi. Every day, thousands of motorists use this 61 kilometer axis for the sum of 1.60 euros.
A derisory price compared to the 6.77 euros that motorists could soon pay to cover an almost similar distance to Castres, by the A 69 motorway between Toulouse and Castres.
The cheapest toll motorway in France
1.60 euros to go from Toulouse and Albi is an almost unbeatable price if we stick to the prices charged on the other motorways in France. In 2018, the site Auto Moto had also classified the A68 as the cheapest toll motorway in France.
If Occitan motorists (and others) are happy to pay so little to cover so many kilometres, few know the exact reason for this unbeatable price.
A large free section
The reason is simple: only the Haute-Garonne part of the motorway has been granted to the South of France motorway (ASF) and it is therefore this only part which is to be paid for. The entire Tarn part of the motorway is free of charge following the financial participation of the Department of Tarn when the project was created.
But why did the Departmental Council of the Tarn finance this project at the time and why the Haute-Garonne did not do the same? The Toulouse university, fire Michel Cohou, provided precise explanations in his article entitled “Social actors and the process of motorway development in the Tarn department”.
A political choice in the 80s
It all happened in the 1980s, when the route of the future highway had been refined since the beginning of the 1970s. Michel Cohou recalled the context:
“The Midi-Pyrénées Regional Council, executed by the UDF mayor of Toulouse (Dominique Baudis, editor’s note), is negotiating the participation of the ASF company in the East ring road works
of Toulouse which will become a section of the A62 Bordeaux-Toulouse motorway, at the same
time that the Ministry of Equipment accepts the concession to ASF of the northeast release of Toulouse, the future A68. For their part, the Tarn General Council, with a majority
socialist and the PS deputy from Albi-Gaillac plead in favor of a free motorway. They do not obtain complete satisfaction since the Haut-Garonne section is finally conceded”.
A French first
On the other hand, the financial participation of a Departmental Council in the amount of 53 million francs allows the community to take part in the decision-making process. Michel Cohou notes it in his writings:
“For the first time in France, a departmental authority is participating in the financing of a motorway and the origin for the 30 km of its route in the department. This political choice corresponds to the desire of departmental elected officials to make the motorway a development instrument for the geographical areas it crosses”.
“A lack of national interest”
But as the academic also explained, “the Department’s participation in the financing of the infrastructure also underlines the lack of national interest in this route. Elsewhere in France, in Brittany or in the Massif Central, the opening up motorways are free without the General Councils having participated in their financing”.
It also marks, “five years after the first decentralization laws (1982, editor’s note), the entry into force of local authorities – Regional Council and General Council, cities – in an area which remains mainly within the competence of the State” .
The shared A 68 motorway and soon
Today, the sharing of the A68 motorway between ASF and the State has concrete consequences. Up to the Haute-Garonne border, Vinci Autoroutes staff take care of road maintenance.
On the Tarn part, it is the agents of the DIRSO who smoke the relay.
And tomorrow, it is the Occitanie Region which will manage the Tarn part and no longer the State. The non-conceded section, from the Haute-Garonne border, to the level of Marssac-sur-Tarn has, in fact, just been transferred by the State to the Region as 360 km of national roads included in the Occitanie region . This transfer of the non-conceded section will be effective, “at the earliest” on 1uh January 2024.
50 years of discussion
As a reminder, the first motorway section of the A68 was put into service in 1992 between Marssac and Gemil. The first 2×2 lanes between Albi and Toulouse dated back to 1973, i.e. the section between Albi and Marssac.
The first reflection on a transversal motorway route between Toulouse and Lyon dates from the early 1970s. Fifty years later, dozens of kilometers are still missing, after Albi, around Rodez, then between Rodez and Séverac-le- Castle.
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