Fifty years ago, Pierre Baudis, the mayor of the Pink City, buried a project which seems even more absurd today: that of transforming the Canal du Midi into a 2X3 lane motorway over the 7 km of its crossing of Toulouse. He opted at the time for strolling and the “flow of greenery”. Even if in fact, five decades later, the banks of the famous waterway and its secondary canals open directly onto uninterrupted lines of cars. Some 60,000 vehicles, for example, follow the canal every day on the side of the Mouth.
But it’s time to go back to basics. After “a first consultation with local residents in 2022”, Jean-Luc Moudenc, the mayor and president of Toulouse Métropole, unveiled the first sketches of the “Grand Parc Canal”. “The goal of this project is above all to give back space to nature, to revegetate, to ensure that the canals are seen above all as bodies of water, and to give priority to gentle circulation, in short to reconnect with the spirit of a walk”, explained the city councilor. “We will reduce the place of the car, by calming the banks of the Canal”, he continued. François Chollet, elected in charge of the file, even mentions “a reduction of around 50%” in the hold of the car around the canal, i.e. the disappearance of one line of traffic out of two, while “the plant fabric of the banks” could be doubled. This global flow reduction project will only be effective on the horizon of the commissioning of line C of the metro, scheduled for the end of 2028, “to offer alternatives” for travel.
The “laboratory” of the forecourt of Brienne
But until then, in small steps, “tactical arrangements”, that is to say reversible such as the installation of benches, will see the light of day along the Canal du Midi and the side canal, the port of Mouth at Lespinasse via the Port Saint-Sauveur or the basin of the Filtres.
The first major transformation will take place on the forecourt of Brienne, today an ugly car park located behind Place Saint-Pierre, at the foot of the beautiful modern building of the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) and the university jewel that is the tobacco factory. The first green sketches, which give pride of place to trees and pedestrians, will be subject to consultation “from this month of January”. The objective is “to open these new facilities to the public in July 2025”. The Saint-Pierre lock, which overlooks the Garonne, will also be restored. On the canal itself, François Chollet believes “on the basis of initial studies” that river freight can once again become a good alternative to road freight transport.