“Contrary to what the farmers announced, who said “we are going to occupy the highways but we are going to clean everything”, we find enormous quantities of debris on our highways,” criticized the general director of Sanef, Arnaud Quemard, this Tuesday morning, on RMC. To cite just one example, the head of the highway concessionaire explained that these teams had to clear up to “76 semi-trailers of waste on the highway” last Saturday in Moselle (Grand Est) , “after the passage of the farmers”.
That is to say a budget estimated at “150,000 euros” of landfill costs “which we must finance in order to return the highway to traffic,” said the person who heads the Northern and Eastern Highways Company of France. He also spoke of “the human cost” of this crisis, two weeks “after a fairly significant snow episode”. “All our employees worked night and day to make traffic as smooth and safe as possible, and the following week, they find themselves marking and protecting the highway,” he added.
A “big first” according to the man who explains that he has been managing highways for more than 10 years. “These demonstrations are protected by prefectural decrees. That is to say, we received orders from the various prefectures to carry out the administrative closure of our highways so that farmers can set up to demonstrate,” explained Arnaud Quémard, and this , on all Sanef routes.
In addition, the boss of the motorways of the North and East of France explained that these closures would cause a significant shortfall for his company, which he “has not yet quantified”. “Obviously, this is a significant shortfall, since we are 30 or even 40% less traffic, so the losses will be roughly proportional,” he estimated.
LISTEN TO THE CLUB CULTURE EPISODE