The replacement of the wooden decking of the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian footbridge that spans the Seine in the heart of Paris, began on Tuesday after years of criticism of the town hall for its dilapidated state. Announced for 2022, the renovation began with the removal of part of the wooden deck, revealing the river below, under the steel structure.
The replacement of 1600 m2 of wood (1.8 million euros), must be spread over two phases until the beginning of September, the bridge being renovated on each side of its length in order to remain accessible. An exotic wood from Africa, badi or bilinga, was chosen because it was “very resistant”, explained Ambroise Dufayet, head of the Seine and engineering structures section at the Roads Department. This “wood which is a little lighter, but which is beginning to acquire a patina”, will be brought by barge, in four stages, from Bonneuil-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne) where the old oak covering which dated from 2005, according to Mr. Dufayet.
“You took a long time! You shouldn’t be in a hurry…”, reacted a passerby, calling on the deputies of the PS mayor Anne Hidalgo, lambasted by the SaccageParis movement which reproaches him for the lack of maintenance of the capital’s heritage. Between the tinkering, the holes or the planks which were lifted, the dilapidated state of the bridge was a recurring subject for its opponents. The mayor LR of the 6th arrondissement Jean-Pierre Lecoq refused to go to the launch of the construction site, deploring that the renovation begins “years after (s) his first requests (…)”.
Heritage Assistant (PS) Karen Taïeb defended “incompressible times” for municipal services. “There are a lot of construction sites at the moment”, added the assistant (PCF) for construction Jacques Baudrier, stressing that the three footbridges of the Saint-Martin canal had also had to be renovated recently. Town planning assistants Emmanuel Grégoire (PS) and roads David Belliard (EELV) recalled the recent doubling of the budget for road maintenance.
Also called the Passerelle des Arts, the bridge connects the Institut de France and the Louvre Museum. Built between 1801 and 1804, reserved for pedestrians, it was restored several times after bombardment and shipping accidents, and rebuilt between 1982 and 1984. In 2014, part of the bridge’s fence had collapsed under the weight of a million “love padlocks” that ended up weighing tens of tons. The town hall had replaced the fences with glass panels before preventing their reinstallation.
