Water, Saint-Sauveur and carpooling on the menu of the Lille Metropolitan Council

• Water distribution remains under public service concession for the Lille metropolis.

• Despite the court ruling, the MEL voted for a cash advance for the Saint-Sauveur wasteland project.

• Dynamic speed regulation and a carpooling lane will be tested on a portion of the A1.

The council of the European Metropolis of Lille (MEL) met this Friday.

Among the many issues discussed,

 takes stock of three deliberations relating to water, the Saint-Sauveur wasteland and mobility, which were all voted on by elected officials.

MEL water

Since 2016, the production and distribution of drinking water in 66 towns in the metropolis have been managed in a different way.

For the production, the elected officials had made the choice, at the time, of the public management.

In other words, the service was not entrusted to a provider.

Friday, it was decided to maintain this mode of operation which nobody found fault with.

On the other hand, the water distribution service was provided by a service provider in the form of a public service concession.

For some metropolitan councilors, in particular those of the Métropole Écologiste Citoyenne et Solidaire (MECS) group, it would have been wise to review the copy to adopt, again, a system of public management.

The group "defends a disinterested management of this common good and vigorously opposes the imposition of the public service concession", had declared, upstream of the council, MECS.

In vain, the principle of concession has been renewed.

Money for the Saint-Sauveur project

One of the deliberations presented by the “regional planning” delegation concerned the ZAC Saint-Sauveur. The text provides for allocating a cash advance of six million euros for its development in "the event of a legal release". A bet on an uncertain future for the project in question, retoked the day before by the administrative court of Lille for procedural questions.

"How can you give such an advance without knowing where you are going?"

“Asked the elected ecologist Xavier Bonnet.

“The judgment will be followed by a new impact study, a new public inquiry, perhaps new appeals.

We have no visibility on the short or medium term effects of the consequences of the judgment, ”he continued.

In response, for the majority, Stanislas Dendievel repeated that the court had not questioned the "general interest nature of the project".

Cruise control and carpooling on the A1?

In the section on roads, the MEL has undertaken with the State to set up various experimental measures on part of the A1 motorway at the entrance to the metropolis. The first consists of experimenting with dynamic speed regulation as a function of traffic, as is already done on the A25 in particular. Gantry cranes will be installed by the end of the year between Seclin and Lille, in the Paris-Lille direction, to indicate the speed to be respected.

The North Interdepartmental Roads Directorate (DIR) also intends to experiment with "a lane reserved for carpooling" on this same highway, explained Bernard Gérard, vice-president at the MEL.

On the implementation, no more was said, except that it was going to cost nearly two million to the community and that this lane would be reserved for vehicles with more than two people on board.

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• Water

• Carpooling

• Lille