While the start of the school year is marked by many changes concerning traffic in Bordeaux, 20 minutes met with Mayor Pierre Hurmic. The elected EELV takes stock of the place of the car in the city, the LGV project to Toulouse against which he is still opposed, and on the presidential campaign.
Passage to 30 km / h in town, bike lanes, reduction of lanes for cars… You are accused of carrying out a policy against motorists. It’s the case ?
We are not here to annoy – I am not going to use words as trivial as that of the President of the Republic – motorists, but to reserve car traffic only for those who have no choice. The others, who take their car to cover short distances, out of habit, we want to dissuade them. It takes political courage to impose this, because it is a matter of public health. The pollution tests carried out on the boulevards are much more positive since half of the roadway is devoted to public transport and bicycles. Our list was called Bordeaux Breathe, it was so that the people of Bordeaux could breathe better, and for that we must limit the place of the car in town. My political adversaries find that we are doing too much, I find that we are not doing enough. I want Bordeaux to have changed at the end of my mandate, I don’t want anyone to tell me that I left the city in the state in which we found it when we arrived.
Leave to barricade the city? Because those who do not live in Bordeaux must take their car to get there…
It’s the opposite. My philosophy is a more open city, which means diversifying modes of travel. The vision of my political adversaries who accuse me of barricading Bordeaux is the vision of the 1960s, that is to say the adaptation of the city to the automobile. The place of the car in Bordeaux occupies 70% of the road, while it represents 29% of trips, my concern is to rebalance all that. It is also necessary to promote carpooling, especially for commuting. I am more against solo driving than against the car. Finally, I plead in favor of a network of trains, on a regional scale, more efficient than the one we have today…
Congestion is also due to trucks on the road. The LGV Bordeaux-Toulouse, to which you are opposed, would it not precisely make it possible to develop piggyback transport (a mode of transport which combines rail and road)?
It is not the LGV which will limit trucks on the highway. We don’t have a national piggyback transport policy, France is Europe’s dunce in this area, because we’ve put all the money into high-speed lines. The leading countries are Germany, Austria, Switzerland, countries that do not have a very high-speed network. In France, in recent years, there has been an increase in high-speed lines, and an unprecedented decline in freight transport. Piggybacking is not a political priority, but a priority of slogans from some local elected officials.
The LGV still seems to be on the way, doesn’t it?
For me it is not done, there is no funding. Many municipalities will not contribute, such as the community of municipalities of the Basque Country, and 36% of the funding for the metropolis of Bordeaux is missing. The State does not want to pay more and the other communities will not put in a penny more.
One can think that in the end, the State will complete the financing?
Is it really the state that wants this project? Communities are pushing a lot, whether through the president of New Aquitaine, the president of Occitanie or the mayor of Toulouse. You realize that this project will artificialise 4,800 hectares of natural spaces, forests and vineyards. People won’t let it happen. It’s a project that is very dated, designed at a time when no one was talking about the environment, and all the necessary high-speed lines have been made. Even the Court of Auditors says that it is a model “taken beyond its relevance”.
We nevertheless understand that there is waiting on the Occitanie side?
When Toulouse residents wonder why they don’t have an LGV and why they are further from Paris than Bordeaux, it’s not the result of history, but of geography. And even when they have a 3:30 LGV to Paris [le meilleur temps de trajet Toulouse-Paris passerait en réalité à 3h10 contre 4h10 actuellement], they will continue to make the round trip to Paris by plane, this is not an alternative. I am a staunch defender of rail, and I will continue to fight until the end to promote everyday transport, but the LGV is an emblematic subject of yesterday’s world. We must put the billions of the LGV on the other lines, it is the only way to unclog the highways. I think we are living the end of an era, and congestion will force people to adopt other habits. Frankly, everyone agrees that we are at a civilizational change, that the Covid-19 crisis has accelerated, and in this sense, what is the point of going ever faster?
When we see the major Bordeaux bypass project re-emerge, or even the objective of 16 million passengers at Bordeaux-Mérignac airport by 2035, we can wonder about the reality of this civilizational change, right?
Environmentalists are there to accompany this change. We can’t afford to double the number of passengers at Bordeaux-Mérignac airport, it’s madness. The rise of low cost poses a real problem in my opinion. When I hear people who spent a weekend playing golf in Marrakech because they found a plane ticket at 23.75 euros, I tell myself that this is an ecologically absurd attitude, and that ‘we will continue to fight.
You arrived at the town hall eighteen months ago now, and some are surprised not to see the “paw” of the new green municipality, what about it?
It may not have been seen much, but in Place Pey-Berland, we planted trees. So, it may not be very spectacular, but an ecologist is someone who is not showing off. They should have been planted 20 years ago, well we are doing it now, whereas our predecessors told us it was impossible in this place. It cost us relatively dearly, because we had to break and replace paving that came from China, which is one of the aberrations of Bordeaux facilities – see if it’s ecologically responsible. In 2022, we will also plant a new microforest, at the top of the Boutaut alleys, with 5,000 trees, and we will also plant 1,600 trees during the year. We have quadrupled the planting budget. But it will take a few years for that to show.
On the presidential side, how do you react to the second place won by the candidate you support, Yannick Jadot (EELV), in the primary of the left?
Among the non-candidates in the primary, it was Yannick Jadot who came out on top, behind Ms. Taubira who was the official candidate. After, I’m not going to tell you that the scores [des sondages] are satisfactory for the moment, but it often starts slowly, a campaign. A month before the last municipal elections, not many people bet a penny on the fact that I was going to be elected mayor of Bordeaux. Me, I tell Yannick Jadot to be very offensive on the sovereign functions, we must not be afraid to talk about security. We talk too much about internal quarrels on the far right: the saga of the Dallas family of Le Pen, I saturate, and I think the French too. The campaign will rebalance itself, and we will talk more about ecology. At that point we will realize that the candidate who knows this subject best, and perhaps even the only one, is candidate Jadot.