Le Figaro Bordeaux
Long awaited, the tramway finally serves Mérignac airport, in the Bordeaux metropolis.
Within a few years, this tram stop should also provide access to “Tarmaq”.
A project refined since 2020 by the prefiguration association of the same name, which has given itself the mission "
to imagine a city of aeronautical and space knowledge
".
An open place dedicated to training, but also focused on the future of the sector: its necessary decarbonization.
The idea is to make Tarmaq "
a city of sciences of everything that flies
", to "
give birth to and grow the vocations of aeronautics and space
", explains Marie Récalde, deputy mayor of Mérignac in charge of economic development. .
This space will be fully in line with the operation of metropolitan interest of Bordeaux Aéroparc, a space of 3400 hectares straddling the municipalities of Haillan, Mérignac and Saint-Médard-en-Jalles.
Bringing together major manufacturers in the aeronautics and space sectors, this territory represents 10% of metropolitan employment.
“
There isn't a family that doesn't have someone near or far who works or has worked in aeronautics
,” explains Marie Récalde.
The project is currently estimated at around 40 million euros, including 30 million for the buildings and 8 million for the interior fittings.
A local public company will be set up to collect funds from sponsorship, but the financing will be mainly provided by the region and partly by the metropolis and the municipality of Mérignac.
The start of work is scheduled for the beginning of 2026, with an opening planned for the end of 2027. Tarmaq expects to welcome between 200,000 and 250,000 visitors per year, i.e. two times less than the Cité du Vin and three times less than the Bassins des Lights, two emblematic places of the city of Bordeaux.
Read alsoBordeaux airport is the only one not yet to limit night flights
Dissension between socialists and ecologists
To justify this major project, the elected representative from Mérignac recalls that “
there is tension in all sectors of the sector
”, and that “
the order books are full and that the age pyramid is not favorable
“, in particular because of the difficulty of”
attracting new talent
“.
To deal with this, Tarmaq wants to be a fun place, with a “
business hub where the general public will be able to familiarize themselves with the wealth of aeronautical jobs
”.
The city should allow young people interested in these trades to discover how they work, to project themselves there, but also to find training, among current trades but also those that do not yet exist.
"
Aeronautics is a sector of the future full of innovations, including from the point of view of the decarbonization and environmental professions
", believes Marie Récalde.
However, it is on this aspect that the shoe pinches.
Within the municipal majority in Mérignac (socialists, communists and ecologists), dissension has recently appeared on two subjects concerning the airport directly or indirectly: a future college in the district of Beutre, located along the route of the secant airport runway, and the Tarmaq project.
The elected environmentalists of the city voted against these two sites carried by the socialists.
Éric Sarraute, municipal councilor responsible for energy transition, judges that the Tarmaq project is “
dated
”.
According to the ecologist, "
such a high price and so many public subsidies for a simple awareness-raising structure, it's not worth it
".
The chosen one would rather see there “
an energy transition awareness centre
”, and not “
a very traditional aeronautical centre
”.
There will always be a need for bridges between people and between continents
Marie Récalde, deputy mayor of Mérignac in charge of economic development
The criticisms of environmentalists are based on long-standing recommendations by scientists.
As early as 2019, the physicist and climatologist François-Marie Bréon, one of the authors of the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explained during a hearing at the National Assembly that "in a France
which will have divided its greenhouse gas emissions by four, there will be no more planes
", because "
we cannot achieve this if we keep air transport
".
Faced with the injunctions of environmentalists, Marie Récalde believes that "
the aeronautical sector has always been ahead
" and that the vocations born thanks to Tarmaq must "
correspond to today's expectations, with the consideration of climate issues
".
According to the elected socialist, “
there will always be a need for bridges between people and between continents
”.
According to her, the ecologists would have "
remained on a museum vision
" of the project, while this place wants to carry "
an anticipatory vision of what will be the aeronautics of tomorrow
".
