while waiting for the construction site, a social debate
“Is time spent on the train time wasted? »
In the absence of confirmed European funding and on the eve of a report from the Infrastructure Orientation Council (COI) which would weaken the project, the opponents act as if the mass had not been said. They believe in it, “society has changed”. While pro-LGVs speak of a “competitive” modal relationship, economic development and connection to a European network, from Portugal to Germany ; they are activists for the “sobriety” of a renovation of the current rails or criticize “this fascination for speed”, as the green mayor of Bordeaux, Pierre Hurmic, says.
“Is time spent on the train time wasted? What users demand is not speed but regularity and comfort. And all to make Bordeaux the example of the best (job creation, economic and tourist development) or the worst (the impossible prices of real estate, the relegated middle classes, automobile thrombosis) since the LGV to Paris.
However, each camp claims to make the green bet that the era needs: fewer cars, more trains. From there, you can spend hours ripping your ass off. Is the LGV only “a metropolitan project to connect Bordeaux, Toulouse, possibly Paris” forgetting the small towns, according to Bruno Marty, the mayor of La Réole? Or the only way to mobilize so much money – from the State, from Europe, from communities – to create both a new fast line, relieve the existing lines for more TER and “Metropolitan RER” every quarter of an hour, break the “Bordeaux cork” and offer a real alternative to the plane and the car?
Renovate the old way? It is to set off again for years of studies, procedures and paralyzing work, for not much less – « fifteen years lost! “, thunders Alain Rousset. “Prioritizing daily transport rather than major projects such as the LGV”, this was however what Emmanuel Macron promised in 2017… before relaunching the file in 2020.