Lhe abandonment of the airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL) in 2018 marks the advent of a new era of protest against major projects. Since then, the fight against “large imposed useless projects” has been structured, notably with the creation of the Earth Uprisings, the fruit of the long protest by NDDL, or that of the Road Rout, which brings activists into dialogue against the different projects. roads on a national scale.
The recent media coverage of demonstrations against the construction of the A69 between Toulouse and Castres has shown that the protest is motivated by the refusal of a world which continues to destroy living things. The A69 project is not isolated. The government recently confirmed the construction of the A31 bis motorway, to double the A31 towards Luxembourg.
The Rouen and Montpellier bypasses are also part of the projects. On average, 1,000 kilometers of roads are still paved each year. The new highways are planned far from urban centers, which limits neighborhood protests. They are also often justified to improve air quality or reduce noise pollution in municipalities crossed by national roads.
Dispute with scientific or common sense arguments
The protest is therefore much more universal and profound than before, in the face of the imagination conveyed by these infrastructures. Beyond the ecological question and the destruction of agricultural land, it is a way of life around slowing down and “low-tech” which opposes the exhortations to hypermobility, associated with a belief that is still as strong as ever. to the benefits of economic liberalism.
The arguments in favor of new highways are essentially dogmatic and differ very little from one project to another. “Opening up”, “improvement of travel times”, “support for economic development and trade”, or “calm down city centers” are leitmotifs recited like psalms by the defenders of the projects. There cannot be any questioning of these values. Public debates are there to defuse local resistance and not to integrate protest against the project by proposing alternative solutions. The dispute, on the contrary, is based on a certain number of scientific or common sense arguments.
The gallery “ For us, scientists, the A69 motorway is one of those projects that must be abandoned », published on October 4, 2023 in The Obs, covers a certain number of them: the destruction of agricultural land, which further weakens our food autonomy; the non-existence of positive cause-and-effect relationships between new transport infrastructure and economic development; Savings in travel time are quickly lost in the sprawl of activities and households or the opportunities for ever more distant travel.
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