The town hall gradually wants to make the streets serving pedestrian schools to calm traffic.
Pedestrianization begins this June for seven schools in the city.
For some, it is only during the entry and exit hours of schoolchildren that the sector will be closed to cars.
This Thursday, pedestrians, bicycles and scooters, can take their ease on Cazemajor Street, made pedestrian, without watching for the arrival of cars blocked by barriers. “I find that great. We travel as much as possible by bike and on foot in Bordeaux, and anything that goes towards limiting the car and which promotes breathing in the city is great, reacts Aude, mother of 9-year-old Marion and Léa, 7 years old both attending Cazemajor elementary school. It's a time of sharing, of discussion with the children of going to school on foot, it's great. "
It was the parents of the students who asked the mayor of the district, Fannie Le Boulanger, to make this street definitely pedestrian.
As two schools face it, and at the end there is a high school, it is an ideal configuration, without residents, which explains why it is one of the first seven streets to ban cars from this month of June.
From 2022, the town hall wants to develop the pedestrianization of 15 to 20 schools per year to reach 80% of school streets in 2026. Some will be definitively if possible, others during the entry and exit times of schoolchildren. .
A space that children will have to appropriate
“Cazemajor Street will become definitively pedestrianized after a period of adaptation during which there will be pivoting barriers and within a few weeks there will be a fixed barrier with a removable key for emergency delivery services etc. », Specifies Sylvie Schmitt, Child and Youth Education Assistant. Ultimately, the idea is to make the street as green as possible, but also to install benches and hopscotch so that children can play while parents discuss.
For Didier Jeanjean, deputy mayor responsible for nature in the city and peaceful neighborhoods, the first issue of this measure relates to public health.
Many establishments find themselves exceeding exposure standards to various pollutants.
"We can no longer pretend we don't know that, it's over," he says.
But the town hall also carries the will to initiate changes in behavior from childhood, by inculcating an “other culture”.
Difficulties to be expected in certain sectors
Ahead of the defenders of the car in town, the deputy wants to clarify things: “We want to avoid transit cars, those which use the street of the school just to go faster.
On the other hand, people who use the car for disability, professional or because they live in the neighborhood must be able to use the streets in a much more fluid way.
"
If in Cazemajor the absence of residents and the configuration of the schools, located one opposite the other, made things much easier, it is likely that in other streets pedestrianization could be less welcome.
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