Opponents of the construction of the A69 motorway are playing their last card. Monday, June 19, Me Alice Terrasse, mandated by several environmental associations opposed to the A69 (including Attac, France nature environment, Friends of the Earth), must file an appeal for annulment of theenvironmental authorization issued by the prefect of Tarn to the administrative court of Toulouse, as well as another appeal against the project to create two lanes for the A680 between Castelmaurou and Toulouse. These two decrees, published in March, had already made it possible to begin the work.
The demonstration of April 22, at the call of the group of opponents La Voie est libre, which brought together between 4,500 and 8,200 people in the Tarn, did not change the government’s mind. The Ministry of Transport had examined, in January, the motorway projects in progress to check their relevance “in view of current issues”. But the A69 is not affected because a contract has already been signed with the concessionaire, Atosca, which has started the work.
The thirty-year-old project experienced a strong acceleration under Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term. The original idea, in 1994, was to widen the national road, the RN126, which already largely provides the Toulouse-Castres link, to two lanes. But in 2010, the public authorities opted for a conceded, private and toll motorway. The concession agreement, published in April 2022gives Atosca the mission to build and operate this 53-kilometre motorway for fifty-five years, which is scheduled to come into service in 2025. The cost is estimated at 450 million euros, including 23 million silver audience.
Locally, the project is controversial: is it a “highway of the XXIe century, virtuous” or one “symbol of what must no longer be done” ? Update on the main arguments developed.
A motorway to open up Castres?
“This highway is vital” to restore attractiveness to the south of the Tarn, where 200,000 inhabitants live, half of whom live in the Castres-Mazamet basin, according to Christophe Ramond, socialist president of the department. Like other local elected officials, he relies on a survey by the Tarn Chamber of Commerce and Industry according to which business creations increased more between 2013 and 2023 near Albi, a city linked to Toulouse by the motorway, only near Castres.
Nevertheless, the public inquiry report on the A69 ensures that“no concrete demonstration [d’un impact économique favorable] is presented nor any costing evaluated” in the project. Atosca has certainly announced about a thousand jobs, but only at the time of the works.
Researchers from the National University Institute Champollion, in Albi, have recently denounced employment argument by ensuring that “Territorial planning research has never shown that the creation of a transport infrastructure was automatically synonymous with social and economic development for the territories concerned”. Maxime Genevrier, professor of town planning associated with Lettres Sorbonne University, explained to France 3 that the creation of this highway was going “generate developments, of course, but outside the city centers” and that Castres would become “more than today a suburban city in the Toulouse region”.
Up to thirty-five minutes less travel time?
On his siteAtosca ensures that journeys between Toulouse and Castres will be “reduced from twenty-five minutes (off-peak hours) to thirty-five minutes (at peak hours)”. But this theoretical time saving is based on very optimistic assumptions.
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In the impact study, the company retains an average speed of 128 km / h, saying it is based on that of the A68 between Toulouse and Albi. But it does not take into account any slowdowns or the weather (110 km/h in the event of rain). By way of comparison, the National Interministerial Road Safety Observatory (ONISR) estimated the average highway speed at 118 km/h in 2021.
By taking only the 53 kilometers of the future motorway, the theoretical time saving is closer to twenty minutes, according to the various calculations that we have been able to carry out. To achieve a gain of thirty-five minutes, the company takes into account ten minutes of slowing down at the level of the activity zone at the entrance to Castres on the current RN126 without considering that the arrival in Castres by the future motorway can also be slowed down, or that these new lanes are congested at the entrance to Toulouse.
One thing is certain: vehicles that do not want to take the motorway will lose twelve minutes on the Toulouse-Castres route, because the Soual and Puylaurens bypasses, built in the 2000s with public money, will become chargeable. To keep the current journey time, you will have to take the A69 for 11 kilometers by paying 1.40 euros.
Too little traffic for a highway?
For years, opponents of the project have insisted that a motorway is not necessary
because the current RN126 is not congested. I’impact study evokes a traffic “relatively stable on its central part”, with an average of 8,000 light vehicles and 700 heavy goods vehicles each day, and a little denser “near Castres with around 15,000 light vehicles and 1,000 heavy goods vehicles”. This remains a modest flow compared to other nearby cities: Lourdes and its 20,798 vehicles or Albi with its 44,729 passages on the ring road, according to the traffic census in 2020.
Atosca expects 10,300 vehicles per day as soon as the A69 enters service, then 12,000 in 2045, which is still quite low for a motorway. “The first objective of this is to make journeys safer, to provide comfort and to save time”retorts the general manager of Atosca, Martial Gerlinger, questioned by The world. Traffic on the RN126 would be down sharply with between 2,000 and 4,000 vehicles per day, according to these projections. Unless the creation of a new axis leads to a induced trafficincreasing the total number of users.
Alternatives not sufficiently considered?
Opponents of the project believe that the existing national road could have been redeveloped. In December 2016, fifteen communities (Teulat, Lacroisille, Appelle, etc.) carried out a preliminary study envisaging several developments of the RN126, such as the creation of a third lane in Verfeil (Haute-Garonne), the removal of crossroads at lights and the creation of a buried passage in Saïx (Tarn). The budget was estimated at 179 million euros, half that of the current project. But it would have been assumed by public finances, while the A69 will be financed mainly by the private sector.
According to the public survey, “the proof that no road alternative was better has not really been provided”. For the members of this independent commission, the choice of the motorway “is only really justified by the lack of will of the State and the local authorities to gather the necessary financing for the complete development of the RN126, yet decided and committed from 1994 to 2007”.
Another track mentioned, the strengthening of the rail link between Toulouse and Castres (one hour ten minutes journey), was swept away in the last prefectural decree authorizing the work.
The environmental question taken into account in the construction site?
“This file is in contradiction with national commitments in the fight against climate change, the objective of zero net artificialisation and zero net loss of biodiversity”had also concluded the National Council for the Protection of Natureissuing an unfavorable opinion in September 2022. A month later, the Environmental Authority also issued an unfavorable opinion, judging the project “anachronistic with regard to the current challenges and ambitions of sobriety”. But these two opinions were only advisory.
Beyond increases in CO emissions2 linked to the increase in speed and traffic, 343 hectares of prime agricultural land and natural land will be artificialized by the project. Atosca calculates differently, distinguishing between 110 artificialized hectares, corresponding to the asphalt pavement, and the rest of the land area of the motorway (embankments, merlons, shoulders and others), qualified as “green outbuildings”. Ecological corridors should be created there, but these areas will have lost their agricultural use.
Atosca has planned so-called “ERC” (avoid, reduce, compensate) measures aimed at recreating the destroyed environments elsewhere on an almost equivalent surface. But the public inquiry report emphasizes that they will not be able to compensate “heavy and definitive consequences” of the project such as the loss of agricultural land, the landscape and noise impact and the cutting off of the territory.
“We are at the latest standard of what is done in terms of motorways today”defends the boss of Atosca, who ensures to replant five trees for each tree “impacted” by the construction site. The company assumes the felling of two hundred trees, but the figure is disputed by The way is free. “The concessionaire only refers to aligned trees protected by the environmental codesays Thomas Digard, member of the collective. Atosca forgets to mention the trees of the properties impacted by the A69, those planted along streams and fields and those concerned by the clearing authorization of the prefectural decree. We would be a thousand felled trees away. »
“A highway for the rich” ?
The collective The way is free denounces “a highway for the rich”, explaining that a round trip between Castres and Toulouse will cost 17 euros. For a thermal car, it will indeed cost 6.77 euros for Castres-Verfeil on the A69, to which is added 1.70 euro for the A68 between Verfeil and Toulouse. Or 8.47 euros one way. The future A69 reaches a price of 12.77 centimes per kilometer, which places it in the category of France’s most expensive motorways.
Atosca CEO Martial Gerlinger says electric vehicles will get a 20% reduction. For home-work-home users, the subscription should reduce the cost to 11.52 euros per working day between Castres and Toulouse, or around 230 euros per month. The public inquiry report had expressed reservations because of the high toll cost compared to other journeys to Toulouse: 4.30 euros from Castelnaudary (Aude) in 2022 or 5.70 euros from Pamiers (Ariège).
“The fact that the user bears almost all of the funding for the project is unfair”writes the commission of inquiry, which recommended lowering the price of the toll for the A69 by at least a third, by making the effort bear “by the State and the communities”. This reservation was, however, considered irrelevant in the prefectural decree which launched the works.