The abandonment of the "bicycle plan" is "unacceptable" for communities

Dozens of local authorities called on the government on Wednesday, November 6, to maintain funding for the "bicycle plan", which was removed from the 2024 budget, otherwise hundreds of projects risk being stopped in their tracks.

"The pure and simple suppression of a promising, effective and necessary public policy is simply totally unacceptable", declare in an open letter the association Vélo et territoires and the Club des villes et territoires cyclables et marches (CVTCM), which brings together municipalities, departments and regions.

In 2023, Elisabeth Borne promised to continue her bicycle plan with two billion euros until 2027, with particular attention to rural and peri-urban areas.

The 304 million euros allocated to the "Active Mobility Fund" were removed in the 2024 budget project, among the measures taken to limit the deficit.

Development projects such as cycle paths, prepared and submitted by more than 400 territories, risk remaining a dead letter, denounce the associations of communities.

"We feel helpless and quite angry," said Françoise Rossignol, president of the CVTCM, on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the 28th Vélo et Territoires Meetings which opened Wednesday in Vannes (Morbihan).

"We share the need to make a certain number of savings, but not absurd savings," continued Ms. Rossignol, also mayor (DVG) of Dainville (Pas-de-Calais). "The municipalities have established cycling plans. We must move on to implementation, and that is when we see the support disappear," which sometimes represents 60% of the budget for the works.

"This will put a stop to our work for three to four years," giving us time to restart the projects after the municipal elections of 2026, declared François Cuillerier for the Association of Mayors of France.

Like him, around forty communities have already signed the letter, indicated the Vélo et territoires association.

"It's a cold shower, with a total halt to something we thought we had achieved," regretted Olivier Schneider, co-president of the Federation of Bicycle Users (FUB).

"There is no good time to make savings," Rodolphe Gintz, the Director General of Infrastructure, Transport and Mobility (DGITM), conceded to them. "I invite us to look at what remains (...) In the coming years, we will still spend hundreds of millions of euros on the active mobility fund."

The government will also "honor" the payment for projects from the previous call for tenders, he said.