Tuesday morning, the Lyon conurbation woke up to snow. Two to three centimeters came to cover sidewalks, public benches, lawns and main roads. Enough to cause a great mess. The winter system, initiated by the metropolis of Lyon at 2 a.m. and reinforced at 3:30 a.m., did not prevent the formation of monstrous traffic jams. At 9:15 a.m., the congestion rate was 132%. No bus left the depots before 10:30 a.m. The measurement was precise as a precaution to prevent vehicles from skidding on the icy road and getting in the way, at the risk of further paralyzing traffic.
But as with each episode of snow or ice, the lack of responsiveness of the metropolis has been pointed out, starting with the elected representatives of the opposition. “New failure for Bruno Bernard who neither anticipated the salting of the streets when the orange alert was triggered since (Monday) afternoon, nor prepared the Sytral for bus traffic. It’s a shame ! “, castigates on his Twitter account Pierre Oliver, the LR mayor of the second arrondissement of Lyon.
Misleading forecasts
Should the device have been activated long before, around 10 p.m. Monday evening when the first flakes began to fall? “It wouldn’t have helped. Snow would have continued to cover what was removed. In the end, the measure would have been ineffective”, responds to 20 minutes the metropolis of Lyon stating that it had been deceived by the forecasts of Météo France. Thwarting the forecasts, the snowy episode did not stop at 4 a.m., as the forecasters predicted. “The situation turned out to be more complicated. This is the reason why the system was reinforced around 3:30 a.m. ”, adds the community, specifying that a day of continuous snow removal costs 400,000 euros.
Were the means deployed sufficient? Of the 120 vehicles equipped with automatic sandblasters and snow removal blades in the metropolis, 20 trucks were deployed at 2 a.m. Then another 20, an hour and a half later. “Of course there are people stuck when it snows. And we can only be sorry, ”said the president of the metropolis Bruno Bernard, arrested at the opening of the metropolitan council. Understand that this is part of the usual inconvenience to accept.
Highways blocked, trains at a standstill
The situation was just as chaotic on the closed A7 motorway between Bourg-lès-Valence and Tain l’Hermitage (Drome) towards Lyon “despite the uninterrupted rotation of salting machines since (Monday) afternoon”, reports Vinci. Two heavy goods vehicles found themselves “in difficulty” because of the slippery road. This necessitated the interruption of traffic for several hours. More generally, many traffic jams have also been observed on the motorways crossing the Rhône-Alpes region.
On the TER side, traffic also proved to be very complicated. “All the lines” in the region have been impacted, confirms the SNCF, adding that “various switch disruptions multiply the delays and deletions on the Lyon railway star”, even if the traffic gradually resumed around noon.