• The city of Bordeaux “accelerates its sobriety plan” by turning off 57% of its public lighting on Monday between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.

  • The macronist opposition to the ecological mayor Pierre Hurmic, regrets this “brutal” decision and highlights “fears about security and its feelings.

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  • Deputy mayor in charge of sobriety, Laurent Guillemin ensures for his part that a “six-month consultation was carried out with night, security and transport professionals” before arriving at this decision.

A “courageous” decision for the environmentalist majority of the city of Bordeaux, a “brutal and unconcerted reversal” for the municipal opposition.

From Monday, Bordeaux will turn off 57% of its public lighting between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., mainly in residential areas.

“In response to the energy crisis and the climate crisis, the city is accelerating its sobriety plan and limiting its energy consumption,” explains the municipality.

“An initiative that also responds to the national strategy to combat light pollution.

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This measure should enable the city to save 880,000 euros per year, out of an overall lighting budget estimated at 3.5 million euros, “and more than 3.4 GWh/year, i.e. 20% of annual consumption current.

Some 236 tonnes of CO2 will also be avoided.

Outcry from the Macronist opposition

The announcement of this measure caused an outcry from the Macronist opposition.

"The public lighting switch-off plan is a brutal and uncoordinated reversal of the urban lighting policy, which goes against what was presented to the municipal council last February" denounces the group Renouveau Bordeaux chaired by Thomas Cazenave.

“In view of the fears, concerning security and its feelings, systematically raised during neighborhood meetings, we regret that the town hall did not choose progressiveness or partial experimentation before generalizing this plan, points out Renouveau Bordeaux.

We also regret the absence of a consultation which would have made it possible to bring out alternatives such as a differentiated extinction between weekdays and weekends, or between places of life, or even arrangements to guarantee the safety of our fellow citizens, in particular workers who have to travel at night, young people and women, the main victims of insecurity and who could tomorrow give up going out at night.

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“Security professionals asked us to turn certain areas back on”

"It is the evolution of the energy context since the beginning of the year that led to this decision" justifies Laurent Guillemin, deputy mayor in charge of energy sobriety, who however denies any lack of consultation.

"It was made for six months with all the professionals of the night world and the actors of security, safety and transport".

The elected official even explains that he has reconsidered certain initial choices.

"At first, we presented an extinction map which was larger than this one, but when security professionals asked us to relight certain areas, such as La Benauge, Les Aubiers or major penetrating axes, we did without discussing.

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The municipality also explains that it looked at what was being done elsewhere, since "fourteen municipalities in the Bordeaux metropolitan area already have several months or years of experience in switching off public lighting, and six other towns are on the verge of enforce ".

“We simply applied their methodology,” explains Laurent Guillemin.

The city of Bordeaux is not a forerunner in this area, even if we are certainly the largest city, to date, to go this far.

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“Adjustments at the margin…”

The extinction "primarily concerns residential areas, adds the town hall, the hypercentre and the priority areas of the city will remain on".

A choice based on one fact: “out of a hundred pedestrians between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., you have 99 in the hypercentre” assures Laurent Guillemin.

However, many questions around security are raised.

“Do you believe that the city would have put in place such a courageous policy, by suddenly turning off 57% of the 35,000 streetlights in Bordeaux, if we had had alerts on possible security risks?

Afterwards, there will certainly be adjustments to be made, on the margins, at this or that crossroads…”

“The policy at the start of the mandate on public lighting has not changed, continues the elected official, and we are not just switching off, we are continuing to deploy LEDs, presence detectors, solar candelabra … We are going to invest one million euros in new streetlights.

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The city has also decided to review its policy on the lighting of facades.

“We have chosen to turn off 90 out of 120 monuments in Bordeaux, and to symbolically only maintain the lighting of the stone bridge, the Place de la Bourse, the facade of the Palais-Rohan, the door Burgundy, or the Grand-Théâtre…”

Economy

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Public lighting: A drop of 20% recorded in December in the municipalities

  • Company

  • Energy sobriety

  • energy crisis

  • Global warming

  • Pierre Hurmic

  • Bordeaux

  • Gironde

  • Aquitaine