Evoking a “Persistent traffic congestion”, the mayor of Créteil recalls the temporary vocation of the tracks located on the RD19, the RDD86 and the Pompadour crossroads, and invites them to be removed to restore fluidity to the “Classic circulation”. “Even if I am part of an active approach to deploy soft traffic routes throughout the municipal territory and find a better balance between modes of travel, the previous developments on the RD 86 and RD 19 must remain the basis of our discussion for future developments ”, slice the aedile.
Enough to give the green light to neighboring towns to clear the tracks. “Following the example of my colleague Laurent Cathala, mayor of Créteil, I would like to draw your attention to the persistent congestion and the risks for the safety of users that the temporary cycle paths set up after the deconfinement continue to represent”, begins the letter sent by the mayor of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Sylvain Berrios, this Wednesday, to demand the removal of coronapistes on the RD86. For the elected official, the normal functioning of public transport no longer justifies coronapistes. The mayor also insists on the dangerousness around the Grand Paris Express construction site where “Motorized two-wheelers, cars, buses and heavy goods vehicles sit side by side with cyclists barely visible on the dedicated lane, the other vehicles being thrown onto a single lane, de facto saturating access to the Pont de Créteil. “
In return, the mayor proposes to make certain axes such as the Schaken district pass through limited to 30 km / h.
For cycling associations, the elimination of coronapists is a “Leap back” as expressed by Louis Belenfant, director of the Collectif Vélo Ile-de-France, which brings together some thirty cycling associations in the region. Because these tracks are certainly provisional but they are supposed to foreshadow the future RER V, a secure and seamless route taking up the main RER axes to encourage people to travel by bicycle when the distances allow it.
Créteil: “a cycling black hole”
“The city prefecture is turning into a black cycling hole, helping to unravel the network around it. This amounts to saying to the inhabitants: if you no longer want to take public transport, prefer the car! “, sums up Louis Belenfant, who regrets that the compromise solutions that have been found on certain complicated axes, such as, for example, bus lanes accessible to bicycles, have been “Swept”.
“It is true that Créteil was initially designed more for cars than for bicycles, this does not prevent us from working on gentle traffic, but we must take into account the traffic plan and the reality on the ground. At the moment, we have three Grand Paris Express construction sites in Créteil, which creates some traffic problems with trucks. Coronapists cause a paradoxical situation. By embolishing traffic, they penalize buses. However, public transport is an important means of preventing people from taking their cars ”, argues Laurent Cathala, reached by phone. The mayor, on the other hand, undertakes to better secure the existing tracks on the sidewalks of the RD19 and to develop reflection around zones 30.
Philippe Ungerer, co-president of the association Partage ta rue 94. explains for his part understanding the need for the mayor to make arbitrations but regrets that the latter has not “Took the trouble to listen to the cyclists” as he listened to other road users in town. He highlights the increase in bicycle traffic, which has more than doubled since the coronapistes, with 200 cyclists per hour on certain portions such as the limit between Créteil and Maisons-Alfort. “And on the D86, we had 150 cyclists per hour during rush hour, officially counted by the department’s terminals”, he insists, also testifying to the new bicycle users who flock to the bicycle school, the Decathlon bicycle departments taken by storm. A craze that the mayor of Créteil doubts, to the point that he is preparing a video to testify to coronapists without cyclists next to stuck-on motorways. “Cyclists are small, less visible, we see them much less”, resumes Philippe Ungerer. He too has tangible elements. “This afternoon, we obtained 250 signatures in 4 hours by stationing ourselves near the Cristolian cycle paths, and yet all the cyclists did not stop! “
In Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, François Rivailly, president of Place au Vélo Saint-Maur, was surprised by the mayor’s decision. “In recent times, signs have shown, on the contrary, that cyclists are really taken into account. We have seen the number of bicycle hangers, signs allowing bikes to turn at traffic lights when there is no danger, we believed in it. And then, the cyclists were there. In four months, we went from a modal share of 1.5% to almost 12%, whereas it took 10 years to reach this proportion in the Netherlands. And on the day of the start of the school year, the modal share of bicycles in front of the school was even 18%! It takes up less space on the road than parents who drop off their child in the car ”, testifies the association. The 30 zones, he hardly believes. “In front of the Ronsard college, there is an educational radar and an elevated platform, the limitation is never respected, and we even saw peaks at 100 km / h! “
“The department has surveyed the mayors of Creteil and Saint-Maur about the temporary track set up on the RD86. The feedback was unanimous on its dangerousness for cyclists near the site of the Grand Paris Express station and on the monster traffic jams generated from the Creteil bridge to the Carrefour Pompadour “, details in a text the mayor of Saint-Maur who refers to the prefect the exercise of his police powers to regulate the axes at 30 km / h. “To date the prefecture has not ruled”, points to the councilor.
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