- The municipal elections are held on March 15 and 22, 2020. Each Monday, 20 Minutes will address a theme of the campaign. Today, the place of cycling in Marseille.
- The city has accumulated a lot of delay in this area, with only a hundred kilometers of cycle tracks.
- Marseille regularly comes at the bottom of the ranking of French cities best suited to cyclists.
No yellow jersey for Marseille. According to a classification published at the beginning of the month by the federation of the users of the bicycle, the second city of France arrives, this year again, in last position of the big cities which make the happiness of the cyclists. In response, this weekend, the Marseilles collective Vélos en ville called on the municipal candidates to take urgent action on this issue, which falls within the metropolis, but on which the future mayor of Marseille can clearly weigh. Because the years go by, and the delay in terms of cycle paths is widening little by little: the city has 140 km of cycle paths, against 600 in Strasbourg.
Under these conditions, according to several candidates, all walks of life, a cyclist in Marseille is a kind of motivated suicide bomber. "You have to be brave enough to ride a bicycle in Marseille," said Rassemblement national candidate Stéphane Ravier. You have to be a stuntman. By dint of wanting to be green, soft mobility as Martine would say [Vassal, for LR], we expose those who use cycle paths to reckless dangers. You have to be reasonable, don't give in to fashion. Calm down guys, biking is still not the top priority in this city. There are 26% of people who live below the poverty line. "
"It's sending people to the slaughterhouse"
"Cycling in Marseille today means sending people to the slaughterhouse," says Samia Ghali (DVG). Marseille is not organized for cycling. We have to start from scratch. I think we have to make a diagram. I have bike paths that start there and you land on a fast lane. That does not make any sense. Doing bike paths to say that we have done so many kilometers is nonsense. We have to reorganize. "
In the hollow is emerging among many candidates a criticism of Martine Vassal's balance sheet on the subject. The LR candidate for mayor of Marseille is indeed the one who is currently carrying the bicycle plan in her capacity as president of the Aix-Marseille Provence metropolis ... and who intends to remain so if she is elected head of the second city of France.
Self-service electric bikes?
"I want to develop cycling throughout the city while self-service bikes are only available in half of Marseille, tackling Michèle Rubirola for the Printemps marseillais. It stops in the second arrondissement ... And you have to put self-service electric bikes, like in Bordeaux, given the geography of the city. "
"We have to triple the kilometers of cycle paths in six years," claims Christophe Madrolle (UDE). For Jean-Claude Gaudin and his majority, riding a bike is a question of boho. But the bicycle plan must be part of an urban mobility plan. "The city's cycling plan is not so stupid, but the question is in the order of political will, judge Sébastien Barles (EELV). Two axes are needed in two years. There must be an axis really dedicated to bicycles, which would start from L'Estaque, pass Chemin du Littoral, certainly branch off on rue de la République and then take rue de Rome. And we are completely redesigning Michelet and Prado. And we also want a second axis, at least from Longchamp to the Old Port. "
"We are not going to redo all the streets of Marseille"
"You have to appeal to the Marseillais: they know in the neighborhood where they live where you can build a cycling lane," suggests Michel Pinard. "We must do a study on the whole city, and see how we do once we have reduced the place of the car," said Yvon Berland (LREM), who called for "a global plan" .
"We must not fall under the pressure of some who want to cycle everywhere, warns Bruno Gilles (DVD). There are places where honestly the mandatory bike path as part of the road renovation is useless… Because it goes up and we will never see a bike at this place! "
Faced with these attacks, Martine Vassal highlights her record. "I want to continue what I started to do," says Martine Vassal. It is necessary to create a coastal path, a cycle path which goes from l'Estaque to Goudes. But we are not going to redo all the streets of Marseille. If I say that tomorrow, I will make all Marseille cycling, it's wrong. You just have to give people the opportunity to move around safely. A certainty: whatever the candidate elected, in terms of bicycle development, it will take several months before Marseille one day comes out of the back of the pack.
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