2023-06-23 13:25:51
From station to station, the file of the Liège tram resembles an interminable Stations of the Cross. Initially scheduled for October 2022, commissioning has come up against a multitude of technical and/or budgetary obstacles. Delays are piling up. But here is the information of the day: public access is now set for January 31, 2025. Three years later than expected.
According to the latest (and distant) news, the deadline was scheduled for April 2024. But four months of mediation between the TEC group and the private consortium Tram’Ardent made it possible to formalize, this Friday in Liège, the site’s new terminus, definitive this time, hope the people of Liège: the month of August 2024 for a “white run”, with the effective end of the works in the city center (from sidewalk to sidewalk without the rails) from November 2023, excluding finishes.
We immediately specify: this deadline of August 2024 is therefore that of the first empty tests, nothing more. The commercial circulation of the trains is well planned, meanwhile, for January 31, 2025. And again, if all goes well: this final period of six months will be used to test the infrastructures and validate all the safety procedures. It is to be hoped that ultimate difficulties will not arise at the last minute, which would disturb the new calendar.
For the general public, traders faced with endless construction sites and the city of Liège, which is counting on this project without having control of it, it is however the essential: in a year and a half, the tram should be running at full speed. , which will make it possible to reinvent mobility in the Ardent City and its outskirts. The tram is indeed a structuring project for Liège.
Structuring but also disturbing (and disrupted) since the health crisis, floods, shortage and cost of materials, inflation and therefore the explosion of wage costs have called into question the fine balance of the public-private partnership concluded in 2019 ., with consequences on the initial schedule.
What was this balance? Tram’Ardent (essentially the Colas group) would take charge of the work, while TEC-Liège would take charge of operating the line and remunerating the private consortium from the revenue collected on the banks of the Meuse. Everything was sewn with white thread. Wallonia had planned to invest 450 million in this emblematic project.
But the crises mentioned above have broken the beautiful harmony. The Liège shipyard suffered significant delays, it was even sometimes stopped. The financing of the operation by the regional funds did not follow since the tram was not in service, which was the condition sine qua non upon release of the first royalty. Private companies have been taken by the throat with these extended deadlines. The banks withheld their loans. There was talk of bankruptcies and even a total stoppage of the project, which would have been a disaster.
The Walloon government now agrees to commit further. To nip the catastrophic scenario in the bud: the Liège tram must be saved! Hence this additional envelope of 79 million “to allow the completion of work and the putting into circulation of the tram. This is a boost for Tram’Ardent, which will also have to bear its share of the additional costs.
Read also Liège tram: a way of the cross in seven stations
Case closed ? Not really. The Walloon government already specifies that the operation must still be validated by the National Accounts Institute (ICN). And then, most of this rabiot (54 of the 79 million) will be released if and only if the work progresses according to the schedule set by the TEC and Tram’Ardent as part of the agreement that seals this mediation phase. Liege crosses his fingers.
The arrangement is already drawing criticism. Unsurprisingly, the PTB denounces an agreement profitable to the private sector “at the expense of the citizens. “But in the majority, the Liège MP Diana Nikolic (MR) is already asking for “transparency on the responsibilities for this fiasco”. Minister Philippe Henry (Ecolo) welcomes the progress: “Mediation has made it possible to co-build a roadmap for finalizing the project, and we will all finally be able to benefit positively from this project. »
1687578856
#passengers #Liège #tram #January