Pierre Castel, the various right-wing mayor of Quillan in the upper Aude valley, has strong ideas. In particular on the renovation of the Limoux-Quillan railway line, which has been out of passenger traffic since 2018, which he considers overpriced.
This Saturday, at the controls of an excavator, he carried out a simulated removal of the railway track near Quillan station (Aude). Originally, it was to be the pure and simple removal of the rails but the strong warnings issued by the management of the SNCF about possible prosecutions for willful destruction of French railway heritage, led it to a symbolic operation.
Pierre Castel no longer wants to hear about the very expensive project to upgrade and repair 26 km of track financed by the Occitanie region while the State's participation is still awaited. And which could cost 100 million euros in total. The mayor prefers coaches to trains. The services are more flexible, adaptable in particular to get to the door of high schools and colleges. And he welcomes the creation by the region of a bus depot in Quillan. Pierre Castel wants to transform the railway into a greenway to develop the tourist attractiveness of the canton by connecting it to the already very active networks of Bram Lavelanet and the Canal du Midi.
But his anti-rail fight comes up against the mobilization of railway workers and the CGT union and regional elected officials who have been fighting on their side for years to relaunch this small secondary line. Pierre Castel speaks of financial mismanagement and political patronage. Budgetary decisions in these very lean times could have the last word.
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