The European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union's financing institution, announces a EUR 120 million loan for construction of the first tramway line for the greater Le Mans area in the Loire region.
Mr Jean-Claude Boulard, Chairman of Le Mans Métropole and Mr Laurent de Mautort, Director of the EIB's Department for Lending Operations in Western Europe signed an initial EUR 60 million financing agreement on 15 June 2006 in Le Mans. Further agreements may be concluded in association with Le Mans Métropole's banking partners.
The purpose of this partnership between the EU's long-term financing institution and Le Mans Métropole is to enable the latter to diversify its sources of borrowing.
The loan will be earmarked for constructing 15.4 km of lines, purchasing 23 trams and building 30 stations serving Le Mans city centre from the west, east and south-east. The tramway will follow the route of a number of bus lines (the existing means of public transport), whose vehicles will be redeployed.
This new means of transport, which is scheduled to go into service at the end of 2007, is intended to increase the attractiveness of public transport, ease the volume of throughflow traffic in the city centre, improve transport safety and ultimately improve the urban environment and the quality of life in the city.
Le Mans Métropole has included this project in its Urban Transport Plan, adopted by a ministerial decree in March 2002, which is aimed at sustainable urban development. For the same reason, the European Investment Bank is continuing to finance exclusive lane public transport. In the European Union, the EIB has advanced loans totalling EUR 28 billion over the past five years to this priority area of operation, EUR 15 billion of which was channelled into urban transport investment (including the metros and tramways of Athens, Barcelona, Brussels, Berlin, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Dublin, Budapest and Prague).
In France, it has provided funding for numerous urban transport projects, notably in Bordeaux, Lyon, Montpellier, Mulhouse, Nancy, Nantes, Orléans, Rennes, St Etienne, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Valenciennes, amounting to more than EUR 2.5 billion over five years.