While the president, Emmanuel Macron, presents the ecological planning agenda on Monday, September 25, the executive sees a thorny environmental issue resurface: that of the construction of highway 69 (A69). Construction work on this highway, which will link Toulouse to Castres, was launched in the spring, despite several appeals from environmental associations.
On Sunday morning, Thomas Brail, an activist who was on hunger strike in front of the Ministry of the Environment, was dislodged by the police, in what the entourage of the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, presented as an “intervention protection” against a “major danger to [his] health”. The 48-year-old man, founder of the National Tree Surveillance Group (GNSA) and member of the La Voie Est Libre collective, met the minister on September 19, who confirmed the continuation of the project, promising to “hugely reduce the ‘environmental impact of the project’. La Voie Est Libre is organizing a press conference at the National Assembly on Monday to present an “alternative project” to the A69.
The original idea, in 1994, was to widen the national road, the N 126, which already largely provides the Toulouse-Castres connection, to two lanes. But, in 2010, the public authorities opted for a concessioned, private, toll motorway: the A69. The concession agreement, published in April 2022, gives the Atosca company the mission to build and operate this 53-kilometer highway for fifty-five years, which is scheduled to enter service in 2025. The cost is estimated at 450 million dinars. euros, including 23 million of public money.
Locally, the project is controversial: is it a “virtuous 21st century highway” or a “symbol of what should no longer be done”? An update on the main arguments developed.
“This highway is vital” to restore attractiveness to the south of Tarn, where 200,000 inhabitants live, half of whom live in the Castres-Mazamet basin, according to Christophe Ramond, socialist president of the department. Like other local elected officials, he relies on a survey by the Tarn Chamber of Commerce and Industry, according to which business creations increased more between 2013 and 2023 near Albi, a town linked to Toulouse by the highway, only near Castres.
However, the public inquiry report on the A69 ensures that “no concrete demonstration [of a favorable economic impact] is presented nor any costing evaluated” in the project. Atosca has certainly announced around a thousand jobs, but only at the time of the work.
Researchers from the National University Institute Champollion, in Albi, recently denounced the employment argument by ensuring that “research in regional planning has never demonstrated that the creation of a transport infrastructure was automatically synonymous with social and economic development for the territories concerned. Maxime Genevrier, professor of urban planning associated with Lettres Sorbonne Université, explained to France 3 that the creation of this highway would “generate developments, certainly, but outside the city centers” and that Castres would become “more than today a suburban town in the Toulouse region”.
On its site, Atosca assures that journeys between Toulouse and Castres will be “reduced from twenty-five minutes (off-peak hours) to thirty-five minutes (peak hours)”. But this theoretical time saving is based on very optimistic assumptions.
In the impact study, the company uses an average speed of 128 km/h, saying it is modeled on that of the A68 between Toulouse and Albi. But it takes into account neither possible slowdowns nor the weather (110 km/h in the event of rain). For comparison, the National Interministerial Road Safety Observatory (ONISR) estimated the average speed on motorways at 118 km/h in 2021.
By taking only the 53 kilometers of the future highway, the theoretical time saving is closer to twenty minutes, according to the various calculations that we have been able to carry out. To achieve a gain of thirty-five minutes, the company takes into account ten minutes of slowdown at the level of the activity zone at the entrance to Castres on the current N 126 without considering that the arrival in Castres by the future highway could also be slowed down, or these new lanes could be congested at the entrance to Toulouse.
One thing is certain: vehicles that do not want to take the motorway will lose twelve minutes on the Toulouse-Castres journey, because the Soual and Puylaurens bypasses, built in the 2000s with public money, will become chargeable. To maintain the current travel time, you will have to take the A69 for 11 kilometers, paying 1.40 euros.
For years, opponents of the project have assured that a motorway is not necessary, because the current N 126 is not congested. The impact study mentions traffic that is “relatively stable in its central part”, with an average of 8,000 light vehicles and 700 heavy goods vehicles each day, and a little denser “on the outskirts of Castres with around 15,000 light vehicles and 1 000 heavyweights.” This remains a modest flow compared to other nearby towns: Lourdes and its 20,798 vehicles or Albi with its 44,729 passages on the ring road, according to the traffic census in 2020.
Atosca expects 10,300 vehicles per day once the A69 comes into service, then 12,000 in 2045, which remains quite low for a motorway. “Its first objective is to make journeys safer, to provide comfort and to save time,” retorts the general director of Atosca, Martial Gerlinger, interviewed by Le Monde. Traffic on the N 126 would be in sharp decline with between 2,000 and 4,000 vehicles per day, according to these projections. Unless the creation of a new route leads to induced traffic, increasing the total number of users.
Opponents of the project believe that the existing national road could have been redeveloped. In December 2016, fifteen communities (Teulat, Lacroisille, Appelle, etc.) carried out a pre-study considering several changes to the N 126, such as the creation of a third lane in Verfeil (Haute-Garonne), the removal of traffic light intersections and the creation of a buried passage at Saïx (Tarn). The budget was estimated at 179 million euros, half as much as the current project. But it would have been covered by public finances, while the A69 will be financed mainly by the private sector.
According to the public inquiry, “the proof that no road alternative was better was not really provided”. For the members of this independent commission, the choice of the motorway “is only really justified by the insufficient will of the State and local authorities to raise the financing necessary for the complete development of the N 126, yet decided and committed from 1994 to 2007.”
Another option mentioned, the strengthening of the rail link between Toulouse and Castres (an hour and ten minutes journey), was swept aside in the last prefectural decree authorizing the work.
“This file is in contradiction with national commitments in the fight against climate change, the objective of zero net artificialization and zero net loss of biodiversity”, also concluded the National Council for the Protection of Nature, by issuing an unfavorable opinion in September 2022. A month later, the Environmental Authority also issued an unfavorable opinion, judging the project “anachronistic in view of the current challenges and ambitions of sobriety”. But these two opinions were only advisory.
Beyond the increases in CO2 emissions linked to increased speed and traffic, 343 hectares of high-yielding agricultural land and natural land will be artificialized by the project. Atosca calculates differently, distinguishing between 110 artificialized hectares, corresponding to the asphalt roadway, and the rest of the highway’s land area (embankments, embankments, shoulders and others), qualified as “green outbuildings”. Ecological corridors should be created there, but these areas will have lost their agricultural use.
Atosca has planned so-called “ERC” measures (avoid, reduce, compensate) aimed at recreating destroyed environments elsewhere on an almost equivalent surface area. But the public inquiry report recalls that they will not be able to compensate for “serious and definitive consequences” of the project, such as the loss of agricultural land, the landscape and noise impact and the cutting off of the territory.
“We are at the latest standard of what is being done in terms of motorways today,” defends the boss of Atosca, who ensures that five trees are replanted for each tree “impacted” by the construction site. The company assumes the felling of two hundred trees, but the figure is contested by La Voie est libre. “The concessionaire only refers to aligned trees protected by the environmental code,” says Thomas Digard, member of the collective. Atosca forgets to mention the trees on properties impacted by the A69, those planted along streams and fields and those affected by the clearing authorization of the prefectural decree. We would be at a thousand trees felled. »
The La Voie Est Libre collective denounces “a highway for the rich”, explaining that a round trip between Castres and Toulouse will cost 17 euros. For a thermal car, you will have to pay 6.77 euros for Castres-Verfeil on the A69, to which is added 1.70 euros for the A68 between Verfeil and Toulouse. Or 8.47 euros one way. The future A69 reaches a price of 12.77 cents per kilometer, which places it in the category of the most expensive motorways in France.
Atosca CEO Martial Gerlinger says electric vehicles will have a 20% discount. For home-work-home users, the subscription should reduce the cost to 11.52 euros per working day between Castres and Toulouse, or around 230 euros per month. The public inquiry report had expressed reservations due to the high toll cost compared to other journeys to Toulouse: 4.30 euros from Castelnaudary (Aude) in 2022 or 5.70 euros from Pamiers (Ariège).
“The fact that the user bears almost all of the financing of the project is unfair,” wrote the commission of inquiry, which recommended lowering the price of the A69 toll by at least a third, by making them bear the effort “by the State and communities”. This reservation was, however, considered irrelevant in the prefectural decree which launched the work.
