They will have to put their hands in their pockets. In a report published this Saturday, the Transport Regulatory Authority (ART) estimates that concession companies will have to invest more than 10 billion euros to restore motorways to good condition by the end of the concessions between 2031 and 2036 It is an “unprecedented and complex project”, underlines the ART, highlighting the crucial question of the end of motorway concessions.
Because as the expiration of contracts approaches, how can we be sure that companies will not slow down their investments and pass the hot potato on to their successors. “The end-of-contract obligations must be specified to allow their completion under good conditions,” insists the ART. Because according to her, the contracts are “incomplete”, do not offer an objective definition of the “good condition of the motorway upon its return” and are “ambiguous” leaving a margin of interpretation “as to the investment obligations remaining to be the responsibility of the concessionaire”.
Maintenance of roads and structures
Conceding that the state of the motorways is “objectively good”, the ART estimates that motorway companies “today spend 800 million euros per year to maintain the infrastructure”. They would therefore have to devote 4 billion over the last five years of their contracts.
But the ART also recommends “an additional maintenance effort” estimated at 1.2 billion euros “on the sole perimeter of roadways and engineering structures”. They are not dangerous today, but could “present a risk in the long term and require costly work after the concessions expire”, explains Thierry Guimbaud, president of the ART in an interview with the newspaper The World.
