Ras-le-bol at Pas-de-Jeu (Deux-Sèvres). The inhabitants are fed up with the trucks. More than a thousand heavy goods vehicles cross this large, long town every day, gutted by a secondary road. The barouf starts around 5 a.m. and ends after 10 p.m. There have always been a lot of trucks at Pas-de-Jeu – a study by the Deux-Sèvres departmental council estimated the number of daily passages at 947 in 2020 – but, since fuel prices are soaring, traffic has increased. Transport companies ask their drivers to go as short as possible and to favor routes without tolls. Located between Loudun and Thouars – or, by expanding the map, between the Paris region and the Atlantic coast – the village is a must in times of crisis. To the great displeasure of the residents of this bottleneck that is not well suited to the circulation of 3.5 tonnes and more.
They launched a petition and called on the local press to warn of a situation that would go from bad to worse. And it’s not over: in early June, Pas-de-Jeu will find itself on the route of a diversion due to work planned in a nearby town, Les Trois-Moutiers. “Several hundred additional trucks will pass through us every day,” laments Mayor Maryline Gelée, herself a former manager of a transport company. The elected official says she has no solution. Demand the construction of a bypass? Too expensive for a village of 370 inhabitants. Install traffic lights that would regulate traffic without reducing it? Not desirable for local ears (nothing worse than a sideboard that restarts). Vote a municipal decree prohibiting the crossing of the hamlet? It would be getting angry with the prefecture or the department (including Mme Jelly is elected), which is not a good idea in a climate of decreasing endowments.
The nuisances are nonetheless multiple, and of all kinds. There are the horns of trucks going up the hill to claim priority from those going down; CO clouds2 which prohibit the opening of windows in houses; gutted mailboxes and scratched facades. In order to deal with the friction of the mirrors, the town hall had to install flexible road signs, in defiance of all regulations. The municipality, on the other hand, has given up on rebuilding the stormwater manholes, which heavy goods vehicles smash by biting on the sidewalks: “We would have to redo them every year. Public money cannot be wasted like this. slice the mayor whose great achievement is to have built a path allowing schoolchildren to bypass the main axis to return on foot.
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