Catherine* hit the road on January 26, 2016, and it was yesterday, August 31, 2017, after 19 months that her journey symbolically came to an end.
The east-west line tunnel was dug, “without major accidents” and (despite a few scares due to various cracks in the buildings and especially due to the huge hole that appeared right at the intersection of Rue de France and Boulevard Grosso), said the mayor of Nice, with relief at having reached “the end of the tunnel”!
Satisfaction was the keyword of the evening, to which the residents of the neighborhood, the first “victims” of the disturbances caused by the construction site, were invited. A nod also to the shopkeepers, an influential electoral body, who will soon return to a state of normalcy (and in the process, assert some rights to compensation for loss of income).
Nice is not the first city in the world to build a metro, and the 3-kilometer route will certainly not make it into the Guinness World Records.
However, the figures provided nonetheless indicate a construction of significant scale, which is never without potential sources of problems.
There is still a lot of work to be done to complete the project and operate the trains.
The schedule should be adhered to: the Cadam-Magnan section delivered in the summer of 2018, the entire line by the end of 2019, at the same time as line 3 (terminus Saint-Isidore).
“The hardest part is done, the simplest remains to be done. That’s my conviction,” affirmed Christian Estrosi, smiling and relaxed, between thank-yous and embraces.
But it’s clear he is already savoring the moment when he can inaugurate “his” tramway and reap the electoral dividends on the eve of the 2020 municipal elections.
