It is a fight led for nearly five years by the Deux Pieds Deux Roues association, in open conflict with the metropolis of Toulouse and Tisséo. In 2021, the administrative court of Toulouse canceled the Urban Travel Plan (PDU) adopted by Tisséo in 2018, the roadmap for transport in the metropolis and around sixty municipalities between 2020 and 2030. Tisséo Collectivités had appealed, this appeal has just been rejected.

This PDU, we speak today of a “mobility plan” include in particular the third metro line project, the doubling of line A, the meshing of the Linéo bus network, the advent of the South cable car and the development of cycle and pedestrian facilities. It is a document that does not determine the legal validity of a project, but it is a planning tool.

Choices not justified enough, alternatives not explicit

This court decision should not have major consequences on Tisséo’s major projects, but pushes the transport network to review its copy. Clearly, the cable car is not called into question, nor the third metro line project. But the court’s judgment rests on the lack of justifications and alternative scenarios in this roadmap. “This does not have any particular consequences, projects like the C line, or the Muret Express are still launched. But we will have to relaunch greater consultation to present a more in-depth study on reasonable alternatives”, sums up Jean Michel Lattes, the president of Tisséo Collectivités.

The Administrative Court of Appeal considers that this urban travel plan do not sufficiently expose the other solutions considered and the reasons why the project was selected. The environmental analysis is based on criteria that are too brief and the population was not well informed during the public inquiry. For the judges, the PDU’s environmental report did not sufficiently compare the environmental impacts of the alternative represented by the railway star and its RER.

A new population survey underway

The association Two Feet Two Wheels initially estimate that the environmental impact of the PDU is too high. The increase in greenhouse gases (by 9%) resulting in particular from the introduction of new bus lines is not in line with the national and European objectives for reducing CO2 emissions and it is not not compensated by enough clean alternatives. This is not what the administrative judge held, but he considers that Tisséo’s environmental report did not specify the methods for monitoring the effects of the plan on the environment. VS

Finally, but this is not a reason accepted by the Court either, the association considered that the cycling facilities budget of the PDU included in particular the maintenance of VélÔ Toulouse, expenditure items that already existed. Activists thus point to the overestimation of the official bicycle budget in this PDU. In the end, it was not the association’s two arguments that the judge accepted, but a third, that of a more in-depth study of reasonable alternatives.

Tisséo will not seize the Council of State. But the services anticipated the situation with a “household survey” received in 2022 and which will end at the end of 2023, in partnership with the State, the Region and the Department, which will give a snapshot of mobility on the scale of Toulouse and which will then make it possible to present a new Mobility Project. As an attendant, it is legally the old PDU of 2012 that prevails.