A few days ago a family of foxes was photographed moving calmly in the center of the highway and without danger of being run over. It is already known that nature can reoccupy abandoned human spaces with extraordinary speed. But in this case it is not a bucolic image but rather the expression of an urban nightmare. Since April 19, the total closure, in both directions, of the A-13, the Normandy motorway, one of the main access and exit routes from Paris to the west, has been maintained.
The discovery of multiple cracks in a viaduct, at the height of the Seine, which links the A-13 with the périphérique, the belt that surrounds the capital, forced the closure of the motorway for a distance of about eight kilometers, causing a serious traffic problem. traffic, by forcing the 130,000 users who travel through this section every day to deviate through alternative streets and roads. The vehicle’s navigator sometimes advises even going through forests along unexpected routes to avoid traffic jams.
The latest mishap is the tip of the iceberg of a very serious problem of poor maintenance of French road infrastructure, especially in the Paris region, in recent years, a situation that motorist associations and part of the press have been denouncing for a long time. time.
“It is going to be a catastrophe in the face of the Olympic Games,” predicts, in statements to Dinero, Pierre Chasseray, general delegate of the organization 40 Million Motorists, a very active lobby in the sector. Chasseray does not believe the latest deadlines that have been given to repair the viaduct. First they said it would be a matter of several days, the time needed to plug the cracks.
But it was soon realized that it was something more serious. The goal was to reopen on May 1. Now there is talk of May 11, but only in the Paris direction and for light vehicles. The fear is that the settlement will be delayed much longer. It is not a problem with the road but with subsoil movements, probably caused by some work, next to the viaduct, of a new museum in the municipality of Saint-Cloud, next to the large park where Napoleon carried out his coup d’état in 1799.
Motorist associations deplore the slow but inexorable degradation of the 1.1 million kilometers of roads in mainland France. They complain that only a fraction of the 45,000 million euros that the State collects each year from the fuel tax is dedicated to maintaining the network well. In the viaduct incident, the authorities have so far refused to decree the free use of an alternative toll highway that could partially alleviate the inconvenience.
“When sinkholes and cracks appear, it is the beginning of the end (due to the damage caused by water to the structures) – Chasseray warns –. We will have to get used to seeing roads and bridges closed to traffic more and more often due to deterioration.” A Senate report, carried out five years ago, estimated 25,000 bridges in poor structural condition. Degradation is also accelerated by extreme weather events linked to climate change.
In pre-Olympic Paris, the poor state of the road network is scandalous in many places, including the périphérique and the motorways leading to Orly airport: tunnels without lights, streetlights turned off, signs erased from the pavement, cement barriers without any reflective paint . All of this makes driving dangerous, especially at night and if it rains.
According to Chasseray, the pressure from environmentalists, very strong in Paris – led by socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo in coalition with Greens – has led to irresponsible neglect of investment in roads. “In the name of ecology, it has become intolerable to put money into it,” the activist insists. But public space cannot be sacrificed. “Ecology cannot be overridden at any price.”
