Three Hundred and Ninety Million

The Alzingen bypass has been talked about for so long that residents of Hesperange might reasonably have doubted it would ever happen. On Friday, the Government Council gave the green light for the bill, presented by Minister for Mobility and Public Works Yuriko Backes, to begin making its way through the legislative process. The cost: €390 million. The completion target: 2037.[1]

That is eleven years from now. The diggers are not expected to start rolling until 2032 at the earliest. Before then, land and meadows need to be purchased, environmental procedures completed, and technical analyses carried out. The Alzette, the river that runs through the area, will flow a lot of water before anyone breaks ground.

Why it matters

Roughly 20,000 motorists use this route every day, heading towards Schlammesté or Luxembourg City. Anyone who has driven through Hesperange at rush hour knows the problem. The N3 runs straight through the village centre. The traffic is constant, the delays are predictable, and the pollution is not theoretical. A bypass that diverts traffic from Alzingen towards Howald would remove a significant chunk of that through-traffic from the residential area.

The project is not just a road. Alongside the bypass, the Alzette will be renaturalised in this Natura 2000 area, and the Réiserbann national protected area will be adapted to accommodate the new road. These are not afterthoughts bolted on to satisfy environmental regulators. They are integral to the plan, which is the right approach. Building a road through a protected natural area without accounting for the damage would be the kind of short-term thinking that creates worse problems later.

The shared space

There is a second, quieter story embedded in this announcement. Once the bypass is complete, the area around the church and the Alzette bridge in Hesperange's centre will be turned into a shared space where pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists coexist. No separate lanes, no barriers. Just a single surface where everyone has to negotiate their way through.

Shared spaces work in the right conditions: low traffic volumes, clear sightlines, and a culture of mutual awareness. Hesperange's centre, once the through-traffic is diverted, would have exactly those conditions. The bypass does not just remove cars from the village. It creates the possibility of reclaiming the village centre as a place for people, not just a conduit for vehicles.

But this only happens after the bypass is finished, which is currently projected at around ten years. That is a long time to wait for a village centre that works.

The real timeline

Infrastructure projects in Luxembourg have a habit of taking longer than planned. The cost of this bypass is already €390 million before a single spade hits the ground. Environmental procedures in a Natura 2000 zone are not quick. Land acquisition is not quick. Technical analyses are not quick. The timeline from bill to road is a decade, minimum, and that is the optimistic reading.

The residents of Hesperange have been living with through-traffic for years while this project worked its way through planning. They will live with it for several more years while it works its way through construction. The green light is welcome. It is also overdue. And the distance between a government council approving a bill and cars actually driving on a new road is measured in years of patience that the people who use this route every day have already been asked to exercise for far too long.