The bicycle plan fund will be “endowed with 250 million euros in 2023”Matignon reported on Tuesday, September 20: “200 million will be [consacrés] infrastructure and 50 million euros for parking”. It is the fourth anniversary of this plan endowed in principle with 500 million until 2025. A “interministerial cycling committee”which will include all the ministers concerned, will also be launched in the fall and will meet every six months.
The “active mobility funds”which allows infrastructure financing, will be part of “in a logic of contractualization with the communities, to ensure that the investments are targeted and effective”continues Matignon, specifying:
“The multi-annual envelope remains to be defined, because it will be part of the overall reflection on transport infrastructure, based in particular on the infrastructure orientation council which will be delivered this autumn. »
According to the president of the Federation of Bicycle Users (FUB), quoted by Le Parisien, “the State will never have invested so much money in a single year to help develop cycling. This is good news, because it will allow peri-urban and rural towns to finally be able to get started”. Still according to the newspaper, the associations are asking the State to “maintain its budgetary efforts after 2023”.
“Support for the creation of safe cycle routes”
At the end of 2018, the government of Edouard Philippe, of which Elisabeth Borne was then the Minister of Transport, announced a “bicycle plan” national establishment notably establishing a fund of 350 million euros over seven years (2018-2025), supplemented by an additional 150 million euros by the recovery plan decided after the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the website of the Ministry of Ecology, “The first five calls for projects launched between 2019 and 2022 were a great success, with 933 winning projects for a total of 365 million euros in grants. 599 territories have thus been able to benefit from support for the realization of projects for the sustainability of transition cycle paths, the creation of secure cycle routes and the reduction of route discontinuities”.
The cycling plan, which now runs until 2027, also intends to extend the system to an entire age group. “know how to ride a bike” in primary school, from which 160,000 children have benefited over the past three years.