Published Thursday, a report considers that efforts to map, monitor and renovate tricolor road bridges remain insufficient.
Despite the alerts, French road bridges are in an increasingly worrying state: this is the conclusion of a report carried out by senators, the main conclusions of which were published on Thursday. The text, a resale right from an information report published three years ago, sounds the alarm on the state of these tricolor works, judging the efforts made so far by the public authorities to repair the insufficient infrastructure at risk.
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Four years ago, on August 14, 2018, the Genoa disaster shocked Italy. At the end of the morning, the Morandi bridge partially collapsed, causing 43 deaths. This tragedy had revealed to the inhabitants of La Botte the disastrous state of a number of infrastructures in urgent need of renovations. The shock wave had crossed the Alps, reaching France: anxious to take stock, in October 2018, the Senate’s Committee on Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development created an information mission on bridge safety.
Published six months later, at the end of June 2019, the report of the fact-finding mission concluded that there was indeed danger in delay. Chronic under-investment, mismanagement of the file by the various actors in the territories, ignorance of the infrastructures… The list of complaints noted was long. “More than 25,000 bridges, in poor structural condition, pose safety and availability problems for users“wrote in particular the senators, adding that”2,800 state-run bridges built in post-war period will reach ‘end of life’ in coming years» and will have to be renovated. In addition, for lack of an exhaustive census, no one was able to give the exact number of road bridges in France, the elected officials were surprised. The mission had therefore formulated recommendations for “avoid a tragedysimilar to that of Genoa.
Insufficient effort
Three years later, “the account is still not there“Summarizes the senator (attached to the LR group) from Vienna, Bruno Belin in a resale right. First, it is still impossible to know the precise number of road works dotted around France, estimated between 200,000 and 250,000 bridges, 90% of which are managed by local authorities, with more limited means. A situation due to historical reasons, transfers between communities, as well as recent crises, including the Covid, and the renewal of elected officials during the last municipal elections, which have parasitized this work for three years, explains the elected LR.
Then, the situation deplored in the 2019 report worsened: these are now “30 to 35,000 books “which would be” in poor structural condition“, notes Bruno Belin. A finding also shared by the National Road Observatory: cited by the Senate, its 2021 report thus indicated that “the state of bridge assets is generally worse in 2020 than in previous years, whether for the State or for the departments».
Another reason for disappointment, if 80% of the recommendations made by senators in 2019 have been heard and taken into account by the government, the implementation remains “largely insufficient“. On the financial level, the report pleaded for a “plan Marshall» for bridges managed by the State, by releasing 120 million euros from 2020 for ten years for the maintenance of these infrastructures. In fact, this amount was reached two years late, in 2022, leading to a cumulative delay of “89 million euros».
At the same time, the senators proposed to create an aid fund endowed with 130 million euros per year, to support local authorities, including municipalities and departments. Today, “the means deployed are not commensurate with the challenges», Sanctions the report, which points the finger at a «backlog since 2020amounting to 350 million euros. And this, despite the National Bridge Program, deployed thanks to the recovery plan since the end of 2020: the latter only concerns the “census and evaluation» works, additional funds will have to be put on the table for the works.
Le «construction site of the century»
Bruno Belin sums up Figaro the strategy to be implemented in a few points: identify the works in France, determine who owns them, ascertain their condition, monitor them, maintain them and finance this work with the support of the State. For exemple, “not far from the order of 10%of bridges today areorphans“, and are not managed by anyone, underlines the senator. “It is necessary to start by making a precise census, to have the identity card then the health book of each work of art in France“, he describes. A work “colossal“. The role of Cerema, under the supervision of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, is central here and must be reinforced.
Local authorities will need experts to assist them, adds the senator, recalling that a “municipality of 400 inhabitants does not have the required technical services and engineers“. On this point, if the National Bridges Programmobilizes significant human resources“, via 150 experts from Cerema and design offices, it would only cover a third of the municipalities, and should therefore be reinforced. Financial support will also have to be there, for example via a fund voted outside the annual budget, inspections and works seeing their bills rise rapidly “seven or eight digits» : «The commission estimates the financing needs for repair work at between 2.2 and 2.81 billion euros, for the municipal block alone“, cites the document as an example, assuming that 23% of road bridges would pose “safety issues or significant defects».
These certainly massive means – it is about the “construction site of the century“, according to the Senate – are essential, argues Bruno Belin, who recalls that the safety of users is at stake. “Everywhere there are small bridges, small structures that no one has ever really cared about, at the municipal level“, notes the elected representative of Vienna. And a significant part of them must absolutely be reinforced, in order to avoid tragedies.