How to better manage the maintenance of roads and bridges in France to preserve this common good?

France has 250.000 bridges and 1,1 million kilometers of roads, i.e. three times the distance from the earth to the moon! A poorly known, aging and often empirically managed heritage, as the Court of Auditors pointed out a year ago, in March 2022.

In a world ranking on the state of the roads, France has fallen from 1st to 18th place in 10 years! An overwhelming situation for public decision-makers and the road community, while the country devotes 14 billion euros to maintenance each year. But solutions exist and the independent engineering company specializing in infrastructure, NextRoad, has decided to present them in a White Paper.

To act in the general interest, the company has decided to mark the anniversary of the Report of the Court of Auditors by distributing its guide to elected officials, entitled: “Roads and Bridges in France – Let's preserve our common good! ".

This illustrated document makes a precise inventory of the situation but above all, and this is its originality, sets out the good practices to be implemented and encourages managers to change their outlook on the subject of the maintenance of this road heritage. , too often considered as a purely technical subject and a budget adjustment variable. It shows the way to economical and ecological management of our road infrastructures.

For Hervé de Chillaz, President of NextRoad: “Our road heritage is essential to our way of life. Preserving it is therefore a duty. However, the Court of Auditors makes the shared observation that we are not there. Our recommendations are simple: let's mobilize more gray matter for the maintenance of our roads and bridges, let's implement proven management methods and practices. We say to decision-makers: money is not the main problem, the solutions exist to do much better with the same money. Together, let's change our perspective on the maintenance of our road assets, get out of our comfort zones and commit to efficient management that meets our economic, ecological and safety requirements for users. »

A preventive rather than a curative strategy

Whatever the budgetary constraints, the Livre Banc highlights in particular the interest of adopting a preventive rather than a curative strategy to extend the life of the network under good conditions. NextRoad thus estimates that €1 spent on road engineering (monitoring of the road network, sizing of works, multi-year programming, monitoring of works, management of CO2 emissions) can generate savings of €10 on expenditure on works. For the experts, it is above all a question of deploying pragmatic management methods and of including the works in a considered strategy, beyond the simple technical dimensions, the only ones generally considered. In a nutshell, restore its letters of nobility to the maintenance of our road heritage.

For François de Rugy, former Minister of State and President of the National Assembly: “Everyone knows that postponing road maintenance work leads to deeper deterioration, which leads to a much higher final cost. Permanent monitoring of the condition of the roads would allow optimal planning of maintenance work with many indirect benefits as illustrated in this white paper. Yes, changing our approach towards a more strategic management of our infrastructures is within our reach. »

For Maël de Calan, President of the Finistère Departmental Council: “In Finistère, we have initiated the evolution towards a more strategic approach to our road maintenance, based in particular on the diagnosis of the heritage and a multi-annual program of works. It is important that elected officials take a direct interest in this subject, because economically and ecologically, they have everything to gain from it.

Easy-to-implement best practices

The White Paper recommends concrete solutions to support managers in charge of road infrastructure maintenance. Among the good practices mentioned, he proposes carrying out systematic checks on the works carried out on the infrastructures. non-compliance, a third of which reduces the life of the works by up to 10%!

Among the other good practices set out in the White Paper, when today 80% of the French network is very poorly known because it is never examined, NextRoad suggests supplementing the traditional methods of collecting information with data from directly from users, those from their connected vehicles or those collected through community road platforms. Once qualified and coupled with a relevant road maintenance management tool, this information makes it possible to identify potential danger zones to be dealt with quickly but also to identify the improvements to be made to the maintenance strategy by analyzing the degradations noted on the work carried out. This is where NextRoad's promise to do better for the same budget lies.

For Nathalie Troussard, General Secretary of the Drivers Defense League: “Drivers need to be more involved in road management. This is the goal of the Activ'Routes community platform www.activroute.org than allowing Activ'Routeurs users to report dangerous areas to managers to help them identify the necessary interventions more quickly. This paradigm shift appeals to local elected officials who welcome this new transmission belt between users and managers. »

In total, NextRoad presents seven good practices that are easy to implement to optimize the management of French road networks in the White Paper to download the guide here.