Skip to main content

France open to private sector ideas to improve road network

The French president said his government said it is open to many more road improvement ideas from private road operators and concession holders if the work is at no cost to the taxpayer. President François Hollande made the announcement during the inauguration ceremony of a six lane upgrade of the A9 Autoroute between Perpignan and the toll area of Boulou in the Pyrenees Mountains region of southwest France. A report in the newspaper Les Echos said Hollande was reacting to suggestions put to him by th
August 4, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
The French president said his government said it is open to many more road improvement ideas from private road operators and concession holders if the work is at no cost to the taxpayer.

President François Hollande made the announcement during the inauguration ceremony of a six lane upgrade of the A9 Autoroute between Perpignan and the toll area of Boulou in the Pyrenees Mountains region of southwest France.

A report in the newspaper Les Echos said Hollande was reacting to suggestions put to him by the head of 4084 Vinci Concessions, Pierre Coppey, and by Patrick Vignal, deputy head of Herault.

Coppey had said that he estimates there could be 100 roads around major cities including Paris, Lyon, Nice, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes that could benefit from private investment to improve traffic circulation.

Hollande said the Ministry of Transport was more than ready to sit down with the private sector as early as the start of 2017 to seriously consider any proposals put to the government.

The newspaper reported that in exchange for an extension on average of two and a half years on road concessions, motorway companies have committed to more than €3.2 billion of work over the next five years.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • ACE/AECOM report: private sector and user-pay for English roads
    May 14, 2018
    It’s one minute to midnight for funding England’s roads, according to a timely new report, and the clock’s big hand is pointing to some form of user-pay solution, reports David Arminas Is there any way out of future user-pay funding for England’s highway infrastructure? The answer is a resounding ‘no’, according to the recently published report: Funding Roads for the Future. The brief 25-page document by the London-based Association for Consultancy and Engineering, ACE**, sums up the state of England’s ro
  • Belarus opts for a PPP road scheme
    August 12, 2019
    Belarus has started pre-qualification for what will be the country’s first public-private partnership – the M-10 motorway upgrade. David Arminas reports "There’s a little bit of almost everything in this project,” said Steve Gilpin, technical team leader and associate of engineers Ove Arup & Partners International. True to his word, there is. That was how Gilpin kicked off his presentation about Belarus’s planned M-10 motorway project to 180 international bankers, private investors, contractors and en
  • A new event is preparing the asphalt industry for tomorrow’s world
    September 11, 2018
    An inaugural event for the European bitumen industry urged attendees to look to the future - Kristina Smith reports What will tomorrow’s roads look like? Will lanes be narrower, will the road charge vehicles as they drive on them, will they collect data, will they be self-cleaning and de-polluting? All these questions and more were pondered at a two-day conference in Berlin, entitled ‘Preparing the asphalt industry for the future’. It was the first such event for Eurasphalt & Eurobitume (E&E), and set a
  • Bordeaux gets sixth bridge, Simone Veil Bridge, formerly JJ Bosc
    July 11, 2017
    The French city of Bordeaux has awarded Razel-Bec a contract for construction of a new bridge across the Garonne River. The city of Bordeaux awarded Razel-Bec one of the largest urban development project in France, construction of the Simone Veil Bridge. The 550m bridge over the River Garonne will be 45m wide and lie between Bordeaux and the city of Floriac. Construction will start in September and take around 32 months. Cost will be nearly €83.9 million.