Eco Valley - OIN Plaine du Var

Eco Valley is the 1st major undertaking involving both spatial planning and development:

 

  • South /North: It constitutes a strong link in the coastal network/ highlands, corresponding to a coherent and supportive vision of the town and country planning promoted by Christian Estrosi in close cooperation with the Alpes-Maritimes département, 
  • East/West: It stretches on both sides of the river linking the east of the département centred on Nice, to the West centred on Cannes-Grasse-Antibes with the Sophia Antipolis technology park.

 

INFRASTRUCTURE TO SUPPORT ECO VALLEY’S ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

For the most part, Eco Valley will develop by means of public transport. The aim is to strengthen the Côte d’Azur’s metropolitan functions by keeping it easy to move around (the essential precondition for social and economic dynamism) while still restricting the impact such individual mobility has on the environment, thoroughly in keeping with the Mediterranean Green City principles.

 

The urban development of Eco Valley will be attended by new infrastructure that can meet the travel needs arising from the new eco-districts with city-style equipment that nevertheless fosters the most environment-friendly practices.

 

Road infrastructure is necessary; but there is a growing determination to develop public transport significantly, for a number of reasons:

 

  • one of Nice Côte d’Azur’s main targets is to reduce its carbon footprint, to which personal transport makes a very important contribution. Nice Côte d’Azur is aiming for a 30% cut by 2020 in greenhouse gas emissions from motorized local travel,
  • public transport is the most efficient in terms of capacity and use of space. It therefore frees more public space for other uses (unmotorized travel modes, more convivial neighbourhood open spaces),
  • planning efficient public transport before urban growth allows downward revision of the cost of providing infrastructure for the new districts (less need for parking space) while meeting sustainability criteria in urban development with new city-style equipment in all the places where public transport is effective, and only there.

 

The tramlines of Côte d'Azur

 

The tram is the backbone of the urban restructuring and extension projects. In the Transport Network Outline Framework adopted by Nice Côte d’Azur in December 2009, the tram network will have 36 km of line by 2030, and 70 stations with 30 interchanges.

 

A real accelerator of urban development, the “Var Valley line” will be the backbone of Eco Valley’s new-build areas. It will directly serve the two terminals of Nice Côte d’Azur Airport and its associated activities, the future intermodal interchange for the Département, and many traffic-generating urban centres and districts, some already in existence and others to be built as part of the National Project (OIN).

 

It will meet the east-west tram line (providing access to Nice city centre) at the site of the Saint-Augustin intermodal interchange. Together, these two lines will accordingly link the existing city to the future one.

 

Rehabilitating the railways of Provence (CP)

This unique railway infrastructure provides rapid transit between Nice city centre and the middle Var Valley using a short (and therefore fast) route that crosses hills and valleys (via tunnels and bridges) and serving a zone around the city that is sparsely populated today but will be more densely built up under the Ecovalley proposal.

 

Nevertheless, it needs modernizing. Among other things there are plans to improve safety and reconstruct the permanent way, and also to buy rolling stock better suited to today’s standards of comfort. It could eventually run as frequently as every fifteen minutes. The creation of an intermodal interchange at Lingostière (for connections with the future Saint Augustin-Airport/ Nice Stadium/Lingostière tram line) will provide city-centre and Airport service via the modernised CP railway, and connections with the coastal railway via the future tram line.

 

A new high-speed railway line with a third track along the coast

The Saint Augustin intermodal interchange is destined to become a real public transport hub for the Département. It will be on the future high-speed railway line, providing faster links from the Côte d’Azur to Paris and other main centres throughout France. This would allow the airport to develop its function as a port of entry to metropolitan Côte d’Azur by strengthening its international links, by freeing the slots currently used for Nice - Paris shuttle services.

 

This interchange will also accommodate all rail traffic, including the regional express network (TER) which will contribute to the growth of economic activity and settlement in the Var Valley.

 

Rail services are being enhanced at the same time. The construction of a third track between Cannes and Nice aims to provide high-speed railway services (2023), a TER omnibus service every fifteen minutes + a half-hourly semi-express TER serving the four main stations (Nice, Cagnes, Antibes and Cannes) + an hourly long-distance intercity service for these four main stations that is really reliable, as it is not at present because of the impossibility of accommodating all traffic types (TGV, intercity, TER, and goods) on the two existing tracks.

 

The new road infrastructure

Eco Valley’s road and motorway endowment is already quite good (the A8 freeway). North of the Boulevard Paul Montel, however, a new 40m-wide road will be built between the Digue des Français and Lingostière. There are two reasons for this new arterial boulevard:

 

  • better service for the urban areas on the hills close to Sainte-Marguerite which are already dense and still growing in population, with connections (partly by means of escalators and motorized pavements) to a future tram line,
  • accommodating the creation of districts of truly urban density, the Nice Stadium and a city park planned for the medium term to the east of the Var Valley, away from the unpleasantness of the RD 6202 highway and the A8 freeway.

 

This new urban route will provide local service for the new districts and will also support a network of cycleways and the future Var Valley tram line.

Principal projects for the future

 

The Nice Côte d’Azur metropolitan strategy of economic diversification, whose main instrument is the Eco-Valley project, entails proposals for the choice of themes for priority sites that meet all the needs of businesses with a diversified range of attractive and complementary offerings for investors.

This involves the following measures:

 

  • Revisiting derelict industrial land (for eco-compatible production),
  • suggesting ways of starting to solve the recurrent problem of unavailability of premises for industrial and logistics activity,
  • actively engaging in the Technopolis stakes (research – education – innovation) while strengthening policies to foster endogenous growth (starter units, business incubators, venture capital companies, etc.),
  • planning new agricultural centres in partnership with the Chamber of Agriculture and with national and local government.

Nice Côte d’Azur was successful in the contest for Ecocity projects, with its proposal to make a combination of innovative measures the core of its plans for the lower Var valley.