A quarter of bridges in small municipalities require short-term repairs

"For the first time in France, 63.180 works on the municipal road network were identified and assessed between October 2021 and October 2024," announced Cerema, which presented its work at the French Mayors' Fair.

The public institution has provided a "health record" of bridges and retaining walls to the mayors of the 14.809 municipalities concerned, all with fewer than 10.000 inhabitants.

According to the study, 24% of the bridges and 40% of the walls are in good condition. But 25% of the bridges and 14% of the walls "present significant or major structural disorders".

They "require further studies and then repair work in the short term," the institution says. A little over a third (36%) of the bridges "have at least one defect" and it is recommended to carry out "maintenance work within 5 to 10 years."

Cerema also states that "5% of bridges and walls present safety problems due to serious structural problems with immediate recommendations for tonnage limitation or closure."

This is what happened to the Theillet bridge in Tarnac (Corrèze), cited as an example and closed in April 2023 after an inspection by a design office, but which was able to benefit from a subsidy of almost 200.000 euros (out of 330.000 euros of work) to be restored.

A funding programme was launched a year ago to help municipalities carry out these works. It was allocated 55 million euros, of which 16,6 million have already been allocated for 42 works currently under construction and seven fully renovated.

"Cerema estimates the annual cost of maintaining and servicing the 63.180 listed structures at 140 million euros." A total of 3,3 billion euros would be needed to restore this heritage, "including 740 million euros for structures requiring immediate action," according to Cerema.

The road network in France covers 1,1 million kilometres, of which 700.000 km are the responsibility of municipalities which sometimes struggle to maintain this heritage.