More than ten years after the creation of the one and only line A, the extension of the tram network in Angers is finally seeing the end of the tunnel. After a final year of suffering the nuisances linked to this long and
very inconvenient site, residents will be able to cross the city from east to west aboard a tram that will run through 19 new stations, the equivalent of 10 km of additional route.
“We hope to have finished the work in December 2022, for commissioning in the summer of 2023 after the trial and dry run phase,” confirms Corinne Bouchoux, vice-president (EELV) for ecological transition and travel d’Angers Loire Métropole with Christophe Béchu (Horizons). Attendance of 30,000 travelers per day [avant le Covid], we could go to 72,000. It is estimated that 100,000 beneficiaries will have a tram stop less than 500 m from their homes! “
Double travel by tram and bicycle
At a time when the pandemic has upset travel and priorities, the birth of lines B and C, which will connect the university in particular to the working-class districts of Monplaisir and La Roseraie, appears to be an ambitious gamble. If some cities today prefer to turn to high-level buses, less expensive, this investment of 270 million euros (including 38 million in subsidies from the region, Europe and the State) is still relevant. , believes the newly elected, whose objective is to “completely review mobility in the city and the agglomeration”.
“You have to be sincere, what you want is to significantly reduce the place of the car in the city,” continues the elected. But it cannot be decreed like that. “The figures of the urban travel plan are in any case fixed in Angers: to go from 51% of the modal share of the car in town to 33%, and double that of public transport and the bicycle to reach respectively 17% and 10 %.
Free is (always) no
Because despite the 20 new Alstom trainsets with 217 seats (against 209 for the current ones), it will in any case not be possible to put all the Angevins in trams, while criticisms are expressed as to the saturation of the rush hours, or to a future predominantly “intramural” network. In addition to the rails, a route of 10 km of cycle paths has therefore been devised and the bus lines, in order not to duplicate them, will be “collectively redesigned”. Discussions are underway to increase the pedestrian zones, in order to encourage walking.
On the other hand, there is no question of making public transport free, like we ask regularly in the opposition “It is the customers who partly finance transport,” recalls Corinne Bouchoux. Otherwise, you have to take the money elsewhere, which means renouncing expenses for culture, for school… or else to increase taxes! And that’s not the model we want at all. “