Liners, Batos and soon (small) cargo ships? After tourist cruises and the proliferation of ex-Batcubs who now travel to Bègles, the reconquest of the river now awaits the return of comings and goings merchants, to reduce the number of trucks on the roads. The revival of river freight has occupied local players for several years between the Gironde capital and Damazan, in Lot-et-Garonne. Or how to organize rotations between the Garonne canal and the multi-bulk terminal of the industrial-port zone of Bassens, a bit like in the heyday of the “Port of the Moon”, when the quays in the city center were still used to unload boats, until the middle of the 20th centurye century. And make the port area a crossroads between maritime routes and the rail network, in a complete multimodal ballet, right down to the “last mile” couriers.
In October, “la Tourmente”, a barge capable of transporting around a hundred tonnes, loaded a batch of shredded tires from the Lot-et-Garonne company Soregom to transport it to the storage site in the Bordeaux area, from where it is re-exported by sea. The barge left with wood from the professional construction waste collection company, Ecofield. “This logistics operation made it possible to transport two loads from the circular economy, with the aim of sustaining the service between the two cities”, summarizes the Grand Maritime Port of Bordeaux (GPMB). Proof that “this dynamic is taking shape”, two years after the signing of a master plan for metropolitan river facilities.
Logistics and handling
In the fall of 2022, Bordeaux Métropole carried out another experiment, carried out by the company Emulsion, to transport to the city a delivery of food products arriving by boat on the quays of Bordeaux from, already, Damazan. It had also launched a pre-operational study, conducted by Jonction and Fludis, which offers carbon-free urban logistics solutions. It will be delivered in the summer of 2025 and must identify the types of goods, the logistics sites, the handling tools, the types of boats and the entire “economic equation to make this system virtuous”, explains Bordeaux Métropole, which works at subject with the port, Voies navigables de France, river and cyclo-logistics operators.
Unesco perimeter and tides
A consultation is underway with logistics companies and transporters. “We can hope that by mid-2027, we will be able to offer a first solution,” assures Kevin Janin Nuez, projects and development manager at Fludis. But we have to deal with the large UNESCO-listed area and a significant tidal phenomenon on the Garonne. “The crane systems that used to be on the quays to unload boats are no longer possible today. Other transshipment solutions must be found. »
“The crane systems that used to be on the quays to unload boats are no longer possible today. We need to find other solutions”
For boats, “we can imagine floating barges, as there are on the Seine, but nothing has been decided”. It will also be necessary to coordinate transport with the Bato TBM network. Everything still remains to be defined. But the idea of Bordeaux Métropole would be to create a river transport network connected to other modes of transport such as tricycles, via logistics “hubs” throughout the city. It is also not the smallest brick in the vast decarbonization plan led by the Port, which aims to “triple” its modal shift capacity. The stakes are not small: by passing by sea, the 6.2 million tonnes which transit via the Port avoid the equivalent of 350,000 trucks on the roads.
