A political platform in the middle of the forest.
This is the very symbolic setting chosen this Tuesday afternoon by the elected officials of the Verneuil-sur-Seine, Vernouillet and Chapet sector to be heard.
They have been mobilizing for several years against the project to divert the D154.
Imagined more than fifty years ago, this 29 million euro bypass carried by the Yvelines departmental council resurfaced in 2020, provoking the mobilization of residents and elected officials hostile to the construction of this 5.5 km road. which would cut the wood of Verneuil, destroying 6 ha of this forest.
On the proposal of his opposition adviser Fabien Lemoine (Vivre Verneuil differently), the mayor (LREM) Fabien Aufrechter aimed to organize his municipal council in the same place but the elements were right for this first option.
Never mind.
The elected officials of Verneuil have succeeded in bringing together politicians, officials of Adiv (association for the defense of the environment) and inhabitants on Tuesday to present the challenges of this project.
“Very minimal impact on traffic”
In October 2020, during a public consultation, the populations of Chapet, Verneuil-sur-Seine and Vernouillet had largely spoken out against the project.
In the spring of 2021, 154 elected officials (a number symbolically stopped at this level) of all political tendencies, from Île-de-France and the Province, had co-signed a forum against the project.
Despite these actions, the Department persists since it has voted a dedicated study budget of 1.7 million euros.
“We are no longer today, and we will be even less so tomorrow, in the logic of all cars, explains Fabien Aufrechter.
A few years from the arrival of Eole
(two stations will be located in Verneuil)
, we are working to offer an alternative vision for mobility in our municipality.
And to protect our wood and our biodiversity to make Verneuil a real green city.
This money should be used for other economic attractiveness projects in our city: it is time for the D154 bypass project to be officially abandoned”
MP Nadia Hai came to support the elected representatives of the sector.
DR
Present, the new MP for the 7th constituency Nadia Hai agrees.
“This project is an ecological disaster and has only a very minimal impact on traffic on Boulevard Malraux, confides the former Minister Delegate for the City.
Destroying a wood to rebuild forests elsewhere is also ecological nonsense.
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“Today, from a strictly legal point of view, the project to bypass the RD154 is no longer possible, explained Maître Philippe Azouaou, the lawyer for the town of Verneuil-sur-Seine.
The recent procedures launched by the department are a last last stand not to assume now that the project is now abandoned.
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Fabien Aufrechter added that the municipality's priority was now the transformation of the D154 into an urban boulevard.
The elected official will also launch a citizen consultation to fully understand the developments desired by the population.
As a preamble to the debates, a procession of a hundred people had walked to the red route, the route of the diversion project, starting from the stele of the American major Henri William Shurlds.
