We can obtain the widening of an insufficient public road

If the public road is insufficiently wide with regard to the particular needs of a local resident, the latter can obtain a widening.

Invoking the principle of a right to open up, the Court of Cassation authorized an individual to impose on his neighbors the enlargement on their plots.

According to the case law of the Court, any parcel is considered as enclave when it does not have sufficient access to the public road, taking into account the needs caused by the use made of it and taking into account the topography of the place.

This time, the owner of commercial premises complained that he could not find a tenant because the width of the cul-de-sac leading to his premises was insufficient. He therefore demanded that the residents of the impasse undergo a widening to the crossroads with a larger street.

The isolation implies difficulties in accessing a public road, replied these residents, and this is not the case since these premises are on the edge of the dead end which is a public road. They added that the problem was related to the urban plan and that they had not offered what this owner had not obtained from the town hall.

However, the Court of Cassation ruled against them. The needs of this owner, taking into account the commercial destination of his plot, and the state of the access road, can lead to the conclusion that it is landlocked, she judged. This would require others to undergo enlargement.

In this regard, the judges have already explained, in particular in October 2013, that the existence of an insufficient path was not enough to exclude isolation. Agricultural land must be accessible to agricultural machinery for the purposes of normal exploitation, they said. In 2011, they judged that a house without a motorable road for emergency vehicles was landlocked. But conversely, in December 2017, they declared sufficient the pedestrian access to a small agricultural plot in a steep area.

(Cass. Civil 3, 23.3.2022, K 20-23.342).