Here is a story that began in 2016 and should soon end: work on the Mathis route west of Nice. They should eventually connect the expressway to the A8 motorway via a tunnel. This Wednesday, June 26, the mayor of Nice and president of the Metropolis Christian Estrosi gathered around him the main players in this project as well as many local residents. A meeting which made it possible to obtain numerous answers about this work. It will allow, according to the municipality, tosignificantly improve the lives of residents surrounding neighborhoods but also the life of all the people of Nice.
Tunnel to be commissioned in May 2025
“The work to commission the structure, all inclusive, is planned for May 2025” according to Christian Estrosi. Work voted on almost 10 years ago, which has since caused a lot of inconvenience to residents of the Arénas district but which was more than necessary according to the President of the Metropolis: “It was important because you had 40,000 vehicles passing through there every day. Soon half will pass through this underground. Before there were huge traffic jams because of crossings and traffic lights, that will disappear. These hundreds of thousands of cars were the cause of significant noise and visual pollution and necessarily the cause of high exhaust gas emissions which are not without consequences for public health”. Christian Estrosi promises that this tunnel will save at least 10 minutes of travel time for motorists.
An exceptionally constructed tunnel
It was not so easy to set up this tunnel, explains the project management: “It was a difficult project due to the fact that we are in an urban environment. There are a lot of techniques that are rarely used. This is the type of work that we build in the Paris region for new metro lines. We first make the walls of the concrete tunnel and then we have to dig below the upper sleepers. The lowest point is four meters below sea level, the difficulty is that. We cannot excavate from the surface to create the tunnel. We have to create a box and empty it of water in order to work, because the Arénas area is a former marshy area..
Erwan Chassin
Developments will also be made on the surface and in particular significant greening of the space. A project which should cost one hundred and forty-five million euros instead of the one hundred and thirty initially planned. The residents of the neighborhood, for their part, especially hope that the work will end as quickly as possible because they describe a situation that has become unlivable due to noise, dust or traffic very difficult caused by the construction site.
