Non-automobile-oriented transportation facilities in Toulouse

I spent several days in Toulouse in mid-October. I’d previously only been in Toulouse briefly. On my recent trip, I made a point (as usual) of looking at recent developments in non-automobile-oriented transportation.

Basic Toulouse statistics tell you a great deal. The Toulouse urban area, with a population of 1,470,899 in 2020, is France’s fifth largest. Only the Paris, Lyon, and Marseille urban areas and the French portion of the Lille urban area have higher populations. The Toulouse urban area, which covers 6520 square kilometers, is one of the most spread-out in France. Only the Paris region is larger, and, among the urban areas with more than a million people, only the Bordeaux region has a lower population density.¹

Toulouse’s diffuseness is, at least in part, due to the fact that, among larger French urban areas, it has—thanks to its important role in the aerospace industry and in higher education—been one of the fastest growing since the 1980s. The vast majority of its growth has occurred during the era when the availability of automobiles has colored urban morphology significantly. The outer part of the Toulouse urban area, with its limited-access highways, substantial open spaces, and thousands of single-family houses, isn’t quite like the outer part of American cities, but in many ways it comes close.² Approximately 86% of work trips in the Toulouse area in the 2012-2018 period were made by automobile,³ and this proportion (unlike in Paris and Bordeaux) has not been dropping.⁴  Surveys in the 2010s suggest that 65.7% of all trips in the Toulouse urban region were made by automobile. In most other large French urban areas (with the exception of Bordeaux), the figure was lower (in the Paris region, only 41.4% of trips were made by automobile). Even in Toulouse’s central city, the comparable figure was 42.6%, way higher than in most other large French cities (Paris was at 12.8%).⁵ 

View of Toulouse’s newish (2022) Télépherique from Pech-David hill that gives an excellent sense of how sprawling the outer parts of the Toulouse area are. The buildings across the Garonne belong to the Oncopôle, an important cancer-research institute.

Toulouse has nonetheless been deeply affected by the movement to create alternatives to the automobile over the last thirty or forty years. It’s improved both public transit and pedestrian and cycling infrastructure considerably. Here are maps.

Map of the Toulouse area emphasizing rail transit lines and pedestrian and bicycling facilities. The nominal scale of the map is 1:65,000. That’s the scale it would have if printed on an 8-1/2 x 11 inch sheet of paper. GIS data come in part from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap. The routes of pedestrian and bicycling facilities shown on the map should be considered only approximate for two reasons: [1] many bicycling facilities are open to pedestrians; and [2] “footways” in the Toulouse OpenStreetMap data incorrectly include sidewalks, and I’ve tried to strip these out. The map is clickable, enlargeable, and downloadable.

Map of central Toulouse, nominal scale 1:20,000. See previous map for information on how this map was created.

Public transit investments have focused on rail. The Métro, Toulouse’s most important rail transport system, uses the same VAL technology as in Lille and Rennes. Trains are short, narrow, and driverless. They run on rubber tires, so acceleration and deceleration are speedier and curves can be tighter than on trains with steel wheels. Stations have platform doors. At busy times, headways are extremely short. Trains can nonetheless be quite crowded. You wouldn’t have wanted to spend much time in the Toulouse Métro during the height of the Pandemic. Construction has been nearly continuous since the early 1990s. Line A opened in 1993, Line B in 2007, and a third line (Line C) is under construction.

Signs noting the construction of Line C of the Toulouse Métro.

The Toulouse Métro is generally considered a success. It provides something like 400,000 rides a day. This number is particularly impressive when you consider that the lines extend only a short distance outside the city of Toulouse, the population of which was 498,003 in 2020.

Jean Jaurès station on the Toulouse Métro.

Toulouse’s transit agency, Tisséo, also manages a long tram line and numerous bus routes. In addition, an ordinary transit ticket allows access to one suburban rail line (called, confusingly, Ligne C) and an aerial cable car (the Télépherique) in the southern part of the city that would be a serious contender in any contest for the world’s best views from an urban transit vehicle (see photo above). Let me add though that, with a capacity of only 1500 passengers an hour in each direction, Toulouse’s Télépherique isn’t capable of what most people would call mass transit. On average, there have been only approximately 8,000 riders a day. 

In France, as in most countries, public transit is generally used for a higher proportion of trips in larger cities than in smaller ones. Toulouse (surprisingly considering its low density) does a little better than one would expect from its place in the urban hierarchy. According to the 2010s survey mentioned above, 21.0% of trips in Toulouse’s central city were made by public transit. In this respect Toulouse ranked third among French cities. Only Paris and Lyon did better. Despite the region’s deep reliance on automobile transport, the Toulouse urban area also ranked third, with a score of 12.3% (again, only Paris and Lyon had higher figures).⁶ It appears that government efforts to improve public transit in the Toulouse area have paid off at least to some extent.

Toulouse’s governments have also worked hard to improve pedestrian and cycling
infrastructure.

Toulouse has had the great advantage of possessing a dense central city built up over several centuries. The central city includes several boulevards bordered by wide sidewalks and lined by substantial buildings that could hardly be more French—or more clearly pedestrian-friendly (even though they carry a great deal of traffic).⁷

Sidewalk on the Boulevard Lascrosses, which runs along the northwestern edge of Toulouse’s traditional central business district. The street has a complicated history. Parts of it were constructed on the site of the city’s old ramparts in the 19th century, and parts of it replaced older residential buildings. Similarly wide streets (with different names and histories) form a ring around the inner part of the central city.

There are also numerous narrower streets, some dating to the Middle Ages, some the result of urban changes that came much later. A few of these have been completely pedestrianized.

Rue d’Alsace-Lorraine, which has mostly been “pedestrianized.” This straight street is the result of a 19th-century Haussmannian “piercing.”

Many other central-city streets have been classed as having “pedestrian priority,” which means that cars are supposed to cede to pedestrians. I’m quite cynical about this. In practice, in Toulouse and just about everywhere else, 50-to-100 kilo bodies just about always move out of the way when two-or-three-ton vehicles appear. But at least drivers on streets with pedestrian priority usually travel slowly.

Urban spaces have also been rearranged in other ways that favor pedestrians and cyclists. On the southern part of the Allées Jules Guesde, for example, car lanes have had to give way not only to a tram line but also to a generous corridor for pedestrians and cyclists.

The southwestern part of the Allées Jules-Guesde, where a space once devoted to automobiles has been given to a tram line and a wide pedestrian and cycling path.

Contrast the northern continuation of this street where an analogous space is devoted to parking.

Parking in the center of the Allées Paul-Sabatier. a continuation of the Allées Jules-Guesde.

Central Toulouse looked to me to be a thriving place. There are people everywhere and the mostly renovated buildings (many built of pinkish bricks) are exceptionally attractive. Of course, central Toulouse occupies only something like 2% of the total surface area of Toulouse.

Governments have improved pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure outside the center too, mostly by creating recreational trails along watercourses, of which Toulouse has two types that presented rather different problems: a major river, the Garonne, and an elaborate, partly quite old canal network.

Toulouse lies along the Garonne River. It became a major trade center in the Middle Ages because it was the location of an easy place to ford the river. The ford was usable only for part of the year, however. During the winter and spring, the Garonne, which originates in the Pyrenees, carries a huge amount of water that historically has caused numerous floods.
Starting in the late 19th century and continuing nearly to the present, an elaborate network of dykes has been built along the Garonne. In the central city, the Left (south and/or west) Bank generally lies at a lower altitude than the Right Bank and has acquired some of the highest dykes, but there are places where the Right Bank has needed dykes nearly as high. Over time, dyke tops acquired walking and bicycling paths.⁸

Pedestrian and bicycling paths, both on and alongside a dyke on the Right (northeastern) Bank of the Garonne, downstream (northwest) from Toulouse.

I’m pretty sure that many of these started as informal paths, created by hikers, but over the last several decades, governments have stepped in, acquiring land and creating what’s now known as the Grand Parc Garonne, which includes many new government-built paths along the Garonne. The result is a complex network of paths that are pleasantly varied. In some places there are paths on both banks; elsewhere they exist only on one bank. Sometimes there are paths both along the dyke tops and down by the river; elsewhere there’s only a single right-of-way. Most paths are paved; a few are not. Walkers, runners, and cyclists must share the paths in most places, but, close to the central city, there are segments where they’re supposed to use separate corridors (not everyone is obedient, however). The general goal of government efforts along the Garonne has been to create continuous corridors. To this end, in one place, alongside the Hôpital de la Grave, a gap has been filled in by a walkway over the river.

The Passarelle (walkway) Viguerie alongside the Hôpital de la Grave. The Passarelle fills a gap in the path along the Left Bank of the Garonne. To the right is the spillway that more or less replaced the ford that attracted many of Toulouse’s early settlers.

Toulouse’s historical importance was also based on its role as a break-of-bulk point along some of France’s most important pre-industrial canals. The longest of these was the (1681!) Canal du Midi, which joined Toulouse with the Mediterranean. The much shorter Canal de Brienne (1776) provided a way around Toulouse’s ford for boats coming from areas along the Garonne upstream from Toulouse. And the substantial Canal de Garonne (mid-19th century), allowed boats easy passage along a section of the Garonne north and west of Toulouse that isn’t easily navigable for much of the year. These three canals come together in the northern part of the old city. All of them must once have had towpaths, but in central Toulouse the Canal du Midi has lost its towpath. There’s a bicycle path along a sidewalk parallel to the canal, but there are numerous stoplights and a huge amount of traffic along the adjacent arterials, so this isn’t an altogether satisfactory facility. 

The Canal du Midi near the Matabiau train station.

The Canal de Brienne, however, does have a fine towpath that takes you through a dense urban neighborhood; it seemed to be extraordinarily popular with dog walkers when I was there.

Former towpaths along the Canal de Brienne in central Toulouse.

In addition, upstream (southeast) of the city the Canal du Midi’s towpath has survived and become a long-distance trail for people walking, running, and cycling. I believe the path can be followed for much of the way to the Mediterranean.

Towpath along the Canal du Midi near the Université Paul Sabatier south of central Toulouse.

The Canal de Garonne also has a well-maintained towpath trail that is usable for many kilometers downstream from (northwest of) the city of Toulouse.

In addition to the watercourse trails, governments have established quite a number of protected bicycle lanes throughout the city of Toulouse.

Protected bicycle lanes where Allée Serge Ravanel joins Square Boulingrin (the Grand Rond).

I can’t claim that Toulouse has become an unambiguously pleasant place for non-automobile users. A great deal of the urban area, as noted above, is quite automobile-oriented. And the city recently managed to evade a commitment made by many French cities to ban vehicles with highly-polluting engines from the central city.⁹ But it’s noteworthy that, even in an urban area dominated by the automobile, governments have put a great deal of energy and money in the last three or four decades into creating alternatives to automobile travel, especially in the central city but further out too.