Mélissa Poma-Vizcarra
Toulouse is an attractive city, over 150,000 residents have arrived in the last decade and are expected to arrive even more. Toulouse is at the heart of an urban connection of more than one million inhabitants and therefore mobility is an emergency for all of us who live, work and travel to this city. As a main axis a couple of years ago an urban strategy has been proposed to improve the urban transport plan, and it was proposed to improve the reach of the subway, this means giving importance to public transport and soft modes of transport, with sufficient incentives to reduce car use in the city. This idea was born in order to offer urban dwellers a better, efficient and attractive transport offer that will unite the main commercial facilities, parks, places of life and leisure in the city.
The extension of the metro line B will improve the development of the south-east area of the city, and has been based on several urban studies in conjunction with Tisséo (transport company in Toulouse). However, this project has been open to citizen consultation, a citizen consultation that allowed the public to be informed about the possible problems, solutions, effects of the project and, above all, its financing. But beyond that, this consultation allowed us to listen, dialogue, take into account the observations and suggestions to implement and improve a project understood and accepted by the majority.
The idea that metro B extends and reaches Labège has been a project already registered by the Urban Displacement Plan back in 2001, notoriously due to the need to improve displacements in the south-east of Toulouse, a need already affirmed for the majority of the population.
This project is intended to communicate poles of important activities located at the south-east end of the city of Toulouse and over the territories of Ramonville and Labège. Joining from its North end in Borderouge to Ramonville, the subway line B has a road length of 15 km and 20 stations. The extension to Labège would increase its road length by 5.2 km and by 5 stations. Some criteria to establish the profile of the extension have been:
- Optimize through an appropriate design and judicious implementation of stations, which serve populations, jobs and equipment, taking into account urban development projects.
- Performance, especially in terms of travel time. The location of the stations was determined to promote their readability in the neighborhood respecting the specificity and to ensure good accessibility to the subway from an extensive and continuous pedestrian network.
The extension of line B will be scored from five stations that will be distributed as follows:
- Technology Park, which is located on Europa Avenue in Ramonville to the park center and near the future expansion.
- Shopping center, is located northwest of downtown Carrefour and allows to serve the Grande Borde district and beyond the ENSIACET school, the National Polytechnic Institute, ICSI and AFPA.
- Innopole-SNCF provides extensive communication in the center of Labège-Innopole near the current train station.
- Diagora is in direct contact with the convention center, creating a centrality around the entire service and leisure area.
- Labège-La Cadène is the terminal near the secondary school, with a changing station, which is the center of the largest expansion project in Sicoval.
The stations will have a working length of 52 meters, to allow the operation of the line with two subway tracks coupled from the moment the traffic increase is required. These stations will be coupled both in equipment and in security similar to those already in service.
The line B extension project responds to the challenges established in the 2020-2025-2030 mobility project
- The impact to be foreseen regarding the extension of the line B of the subway will be, above all, the protection of the environment. About five kilometers of the extension of line B there are identified physical or natural components that must be preserved and taken into account in the route of choice. The main one among them is the Canal du Midi, classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site, a channel that is necessary to cross to exit the current Ramonville terminal.
- Accessibility problems to meet the demand for travel linked to population and economic growth.
- On issues of attractiveness to strengthen access and maintain the attractiveness of employment areas.
- Of urban challenges to organize the conditions for sustainable mobility with a view to sustained population growth.
- Of innovation challenges to anticipate the mobility of tomorrow so that users no longer experience their trips as a limitation but as an opportunity.
This project, therefore, is a structuring element of the 2020-2025-2030 Mobility Project and is part of a global and multimodal mobility offer that should facilitate travel in the southeast of the agglomeration in Toulouse.
