This time, they attack with pencil strokes. After climbing trees, organizing a giant demonstration and taking legal action, opponents of the A69 motorway between Castres (Tarn) and Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) draw the weapon of the alternative and citizen project. With the help of the young landscape planner Karim Lahiani – a Toulousian to the rescue of “the road to [son] childhood” that he traveled to visit his grandparents from Tarn -, they presented this Tuesday “another possible path”. As studied in 2016 by the local authorities, they simply propose a “one-off development” of the existing road, the RN126. By securing intersections, planting lots of trees and creating a few passing zones.
Not enough to win the fifteen-minute journey promised by the A69 motorway from the dealership Atosca. “But with free straps and without toll at 17 euros round trip”, retort the members of the collective The Way is Clear (LVEL) who recall that, for the time being, “only 7,600 cars” per day use the route. “To the utopia of a highway that we are told is ecological”, they prefer another “vision”, more pleasing for local residents and which they know in advance that some will not fail to make fun of.
Reduce traffic by 25%
Because, in the great corridor of the A69, where 366 hectares of land have already been expropriated, they quite simply propose to build a cycle route, the “national 1”: 52 kilometers of track initially, allowing the development of cycle tourism in this beautiful plain but also to secure short journeys between towns. “The idea is to reduce car traffic by 25% by 2030 and to reach 5,500 vehicles per day”, specifies Karim Lahiani. And as no one intends to cycle Castres-Toulouse to go to work, the collective proposes to beef up public transport: by increasing the frequency of the regional council’s liO buses and by creating five new railway stops further north, on the Castres/Vielmur/Saint-Sulpice/Toulouse axis, with “simple release tracks so that long trains can overtake short trains”.
On the axis of the RN126, rather than an anarchic development that would not fail to cause a motorway, the project suggests to “densify the activity zones” that already exist. On the edge of the municipalities crossed, Karim Lahiani imagined bocage landscapes, with shared gardens and public orchards, and small agricultural plots where young farmers could settle.
A Cycling City and a “Fertility Center”
Finally, to create “1,000 direct jobs”, as much as the construction of the motorway, the opponents, who have been working in secret for months, have imagined seven major projects managed by cooperatives: A “Cité du vélo” in the area of Chartreuse in Castres where, among others, creators would think about new mobility on two wheels; an “air and meteorological base” in Bourg-Saint-Bernard, already a paradise for gliders; or a “Fertility plant” in Gragnague which would receive compost from the surrounding area and excavated soil to resell the latter once “enriched”.
This alternative project will be distilled and illustrated on social networks in the days and weeks to come. It is estimated at 100 million euros, including 30 million for the cycle route and 85% public funding, excluding redevelopment of the RN126 and possible compensation for the concessionaire. The anti-motorway will put it in “open source”, “available to the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune or the president of the region Carole Delga (PS)”. After having been dismissed from their first legal appeal against the A69 at the beginning of August, they appealed to the Council of State. And they remain convinced that, “like the Sivens dam”, of sad memory, the A69 motorway will end up being deemed illegal. Hence their call, launched for the umpteenth time, to decide on a moratorium on the site. The time to purge the legal remedies and not to make things “irreversible”.