Chloé Lagadou with AFP / Photo credits: Lou BENOIST / AFP 18:20 pm, May 07, 2023

The prefecture of Eure announced Sunday afternoon that demonstrators hostile to the Rouen motorway bypass project were blocking the A13 motorway. The group Les Soulèvements de la terre claimed responsibility for the action. Bison Futé indicated around 17 p.m. traffic jams of 4 km in the direction Cherbourg-Paris and 3 km in the other direction.

Protesters hostile to the Rouen motorway bypass project blocked the A13 motorway on Sunday afternoon, the Eure prefecture announced. "Demonstration underway on the A13 at Louviers (PK 100). Traffic is also blocked on the D6015 between Pont de l'Arche and Le Vaudreuil. Avoid the area," the prefecture said on Twitter.

⚠️ Demonstration underway on the A13 at Louviers (PK 100).
Traffic is also blocked on the D6015 between Pont de l'Arche and Le Vaudreuil.

Avoid the sector

— Prefect of Eure (@Prefet27) May 7, 2023

On the same social network, the Earth Uprisings claimed responsibility for this action. "After crossing the forest of Bord and then the national one, the demonstrators equipped themselves with sticks and invested the motorway to contest the project of the future A133 A134". Bison Futé indicated around 17:00 traffic jams of 4 km in the direction Cherbourg-Paris and 3 km in the other direction on the A13.

In Rouen, a thousand people denounced a bypass project

Saturday, a thousand people had gathered in the agglomeration of Rouen in a festive atmosphere to denounce the project of motorway bypass of the Norman city by the east. The event, which is to last the entire bridge of May 8, is organized in Léry-Poses (Eure) by the Soulèvements de la terre, whose dissolution the government is considering, and by the local associations Non à l'autoroute (NALA), Alternatiba-Rouen and Effet de Serre toi-même.

This 41.5 km toll motorway project should link the A28 in the north to the A13 in the south, bypassing the Rouen agglomeration from the east. "Rouen remains the only French metropolis of this size without road bypass," said the prefecture on its website in 2021. "This translates into a significant flow of heavy goods vehicles in urban areas," said a letter from the prefect sent in January 2021 to communities. The cost of the project is estimated at nearly one billion euros excluding taxes, according to Guillaume Grima, one of the leaders of Effet de Serre yourself and former elected Greens in Rouen.