Imagine a French cycle path, very local to us, in the countryside, envied by our neighbors in the Netherlands.
This is not a joke, nor a Marseille exaggeration: a member of the very important Dutch bicycle embassy, traveling in a rural area north of Nantes, admitted to being impressed by the level of quality of the work.
It must be said that the community of communes of Erdre and Gesvres (Loire-Atlantique), between Nantes and Rennes, has pulled out all the stops.
In a territory of nearly 70,000 inhabitants, spread over twelve municipalities, it has undertaken a massive cycling plan for several years, with nine million euros.
The objective is clear: to make it possible to cycle everywhere without ever sharing the road with motorists, in this area which is also beginning to be “congested by cars”.
During rush hours, traffic jams appear like neighboring Nantes, whose traffic jams on the ring road now have nothing to envy of those in the capital.
Two-thirds of households own at least two vehicles.
60% of journeys are made alone in the car, while just under one in two are less than three kilometers long.
The emblem of this immense bicycle construction site is a house… with holes.
In place of the office, a cycle path.
When it was necessary to make a track along the very dangerous D 26, this house blocked future development.
Luckily, Wilfried Braud, in charge of the cycle network, learned that its owners were selling it.
“The decision was taken with the architect to remove the office from the ground floor and put the track there,” enthuses this developer, proud to embody a new way of seeing travel in the countryside.
“The alternative was to have cyclists go around the village, with the risk that they would not do so and put themselves in danger on the road.
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In addition to digging out the house, we also had to shake our brains to fit within the budget.
Nine million euros is both enormous for this type of territory which in the past relied everything on infrastructure dedicated to cars and very little to leave ex nihilo the paths reserved for bicycles.
The price range for cycling infrastructure is immense depending on the work to be carried out.
From 50,000 euros per kilometer to 10 million.
In Europe, the average price is around 200,000 euros per kilometer.
The cost of the house, excluding the cost of purchasing the house, amounts to 350,000 euros per kilometer.
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Elsewhere we had to be clever, for example by reusing these small agricultural roads, previously used by everyone.
Farmers of course, but also motorists in a hurry, delighted to be able to find a shortcut.
Now it's over, these agricultural paths have been transformed into cycle paths.
Bicycles coexist with tractors.
And the farmers, a little wary at first, are delighted to find more security and serenity around their fields and farms.
As for the cows, they too have the right to their “infra”.
It's the cycloduct.
The opposite of the boviduct which was a tunnel previously reserved for cattle to pass a highway, now reused for a cycle path.
The cycloduct is a bridge specially created to allow cows to pass over a track.
Partly financed by the farmer, who sees it as a much more efficient way of moving his animals from one field to another.
Thanks to this cycloduct, no more cables pulled on the track to guide the cattle, and no more cows running away.