The little notebooks of the Sète poufre: a new footbridge but what future for the Sète station ?

Tous les lundis, il pose ses ventouses sur l’actualité locale. – DR

Tous les lundis, il pose ses ventouses sur l’actualité locale. Ce 9 décembre, il s’amuse de voir inaugurée la nouvelle passerelle de la gare de Sète, quand on promet un avenir funeste à cette dernière…

“Finally!”, Poufre would be tempted to say, upon learning that the Sète train station footbridge is about to be inaugurated this Monday. Oh, we've been talking about it for a while, this metal stride intended to jump over the railway tracks to connect the new north and south forecourts. Cost of the operation: €8 million, including €3.3 million from Sète Agglo. Even saltier than the water in the Aristide-Briand car park!

But, at the risk of jumping on the bandwagon, Poufre is wondering. What is the point of a footbridge to connect the two forecourts of a station whose long-term future seems to be written in dotted lines ?

Fewer trains and risk of submersion of the coastal line…

Thanks to the sprawling project for the future Montpellier-Perpignan line, we learned that Sète could lose two thirds of its TGV trains in the future. In concrete terms, going from around nine passages today to possibly three. The scumbag is choking!

Worse still, the maps of the Bureau d’études minières (BRGM) and the Centre d’études et d’expertise sur les risques, l’environnement, la mobilité et l’aménagement (Cerema), confirm the submersion of the current railway line – known as the “littoral” – within a century.

On the side of the mayors of the Agglo, discussions are going well. They even wrote to Michel Barnier (who has since ceased to be Prime Minister) to ask that the project be re-examined. Reworked. Adapted, in order to allow the territory to be served in the long term. And why not reserve land to build a future station. Elsewhere. Certainly not in Sète. Too bad for the pretty footbridge and for our Poufre sétois. Already nostalgic at the idea, one day, of no longer hearing the train whistle…

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