The environment and political ecology have become an essential part of public debate. Among all the sectors where the ecological transition still needs to become the norm, roads have—and will continue to have—a major role to play. Between new infrastructures and the revolution in individual behaviors, the paths are numerous.
“The road is a long ribbon. It keeps unfolding and unfolding. And gets lost into infinity. Far from the cities, far from the cities…” sang Yves Montand in the 1950s. Lightheartedness was the order of the day. It was the time for paid vacations far from Paris, for the shipping of goods across all corners of France. And without counting. But times have changed; the climate emergency has come knocking at the door. With the dunce cap of CO2 emitting sectors (6% of total emissions in France), road transport—private cars and freight included—is now up against the wall. Its revolution has begun, with the rise of clean vehicles, electric or using biofuels. Now, the road itself must reinvent itself. This will involve both technological innovations and changes in some of our behaviors. The government, industries, and motorists must now share this common adventure.
Infrastructures: the ongoing revolution
Regarding infrastructure, the road revolution—and more specifically that of highways where major investments take place—will occur in two phases. The first phase has begun with new facilities. The second will take place later, in the wake of current research and development programs.
The major maneuvers have therefore already started on the 9,100 km of French highways. Among the SCA (highway concession companies), major names in French construction have stepped up and are investing in the highways of tomorrow. This is the case, for example, with Vinci Autoroutes (4,443 km of network), which is currently developing its “low-carbon highways” concept. This program revolves around several axes: promoting electric mobility by increasing the number of charging stations, new carpooling parking lots, environmental enhancements to protect biodiversity, and the collection and recovery of highway waste. Local partnerships are already showing good results, as is the case in the PACA region (chaired by Renaud Muselier), where Vinci is greening nearly 900 km of highways: “Transport infrastructures are today more than ever at the heart of mobility, energy, and territorial development issues,” argues Pierre Coppey, CEO of Vinci Autoroutes. “My conviction is that the highway is the future transport infrastructure par excellence, as it constitutes, through initiatives like the low-carbon highway, a formidable catalyst for accelerating the transformation of usages and enabling the advent of more sustainable mobilities.” The company has therefore committed to halving its CO2 emissions by 2030.
This commitment is shared by the other major player in the French highway sector, Eiffage, through its two subsidiaries, APRR and AREA (2,323 km in total). “Aware and committed, highway concessions actively participate in the fight against climate change and deploy an ambitious low-carbon strategy in the service of mobility,” assures Ghislaine Baillemont, Director of Innovation, Construction, and Development at APRR. “We are innovating with the opening in late 2020 of the first carpooling reserved lane in France on the A48 in Grenoble.” At Eiffage, the focus is particularly on the development of very high-power charging networks (THP) for private vehicles. Without these installations, promoted by all highway operators, motorists will still be reluctant to give up their combustion engine cars in favor of 100% electric vehicles.
Behavioral change: the awaited revolution
The major operators have thus resolved the eternal chicken-and-egg question: to enable changes in individual behaviors, the solution is to set up the facilities that users need on a daily basis. To go even further, Vinci’s multimodal strategy encourages motorists to include their car journeys in a “transport mix,” between carpooling and connection to bus or rail networks. “Our objective is to promote multimodal exchanges,” explains Christophe Hug, Deputy General Manager in charge of project management at Vinci Autoroutes, “and to offer new solutions to combat single-occupancy vehicle use and facilitate access from the suburbs to the hyper-centers and the services associated with them. We are, for example, working on new developments in southern Paris with the development of a multimodal hub in Longvilliers.” There, in the Yvelines, a new bus station will accommodate more than 250 vehicles to encourage bus network use toward the capital and the RER stations of Orsay-Ville and Massy-Palaiseau. A change in practice that will mainly allow Parisians to no longer lose hours in traffic jams while using more collective and eco-friendly means of transportation.
The ongoing revolution also pursues another objective that each operator considers inseparable from sustainable mobility: road safety.
In 2018, the “National Interministerial Observatory of Road Safety” drew the attention of highway operators: “Since 2010, mortality has increased by +5% on highways and decreased more off-peak (-23%) than in peak areas (-15%).” Since then, awareness campaigns, both visual and audio, have multiplied on the expressways. Similar to the low-carbon highway in the PACA region, other pilot projects promote motorist safety, like those conducted by Colas, a subsidiary of the Bouygues group. Their names: Anaïs and Flowell. The first—awarded the 2019 Road Safety Innovation Trophy—is a system for collecting mobile information about vehicle behavior on the road. Real-time analysis thus allows for accident prevention and informs the operator of any necessary improvements without delay. The second—Flowell—is a luminous and dynamic road marking. “Colas is committed to conducting its industrial activities responsibly, particularly in terms of safety and environmental preservation (resource savings through recycling in particular, biodiversity, limitation of nuisances),” explains Frédéric Gardès, CEO of the company, for whom safety and the environment go hand in hand.
“Bio” highways: the revolution to come
Beyond new developments facilitating individual behaviors, highway operators are developing new ways to conceive the road itself, starting with asphalt, which is usually replaced every ten years. Like many industrial sectors, highway companies are increasing their raw material recycling capacities to recover their waste. Every year, the “Technical Road Days (JTR)” set the tone for the latest advances in this field. With, in the background over the past five years, the goal of drastically reducing the “road’s energy bill and transforming it into an energy producer.
In 2019, for example, Eurovia—a subsidiary of Vinci—designed “the first 100% recycled section. An initiative praised by ADEME (Agency for the Environment and Energy Management) during its call for project dubbed “Roads of the Future.” The experiment was attempted near Bordeaux, and “the principle works wonderfully, as rejoices Jean-Pierre Paseri, then CEO of Eurovia France, in the columns of Le Monde: “This is a world first. With this unique tool, we are able to produce a completely recycled classic asphalt.”
These “roads of the future” have also highlighted other innovations, such as the development of new materials intended to eventually replace these coatings deriving from the petrochemical industry. This is the case, for example, with new coatings made from algae capable of self-repair. Near Montpellier (Occitanie region chaired by Carole Delga), another successful experiment was conducted for the renovation of a departmental section, using “pine waste. The idea of a plant-based coating is also being developed by Eiffage with its green asphalt named “Recytal Arm,” which is much less energy-intensive, from its design right up to its use. And the list of French innovations is still long, from Power Road, “Eurovia’s positive energy road,” to Wattway, “the electric road designed by Colas.” The road of the future is thus being conceived today for tomorrow’s uses. Like all countries that signed the Paris Agreement, France has committed to “zero carbon emissions” by 2050, and is mobilizing to ensure that the road contributes as much as possible.
