Photos: What will Nice’s Ligne 5 tramway look like?

Plans for Nice’s fifth and final tramway line between Nice and Drap via La Trinité have been revealed. Here’s what the public transport project will eventually look like.

When the first tramway line was commissioned at the end of 2007, it changed the way the people of Nice were able to get around.

The Ligne 1 was later followed by an east-west route that vastly improved cross-city travel, and then came the Saint Isidore tramline, the Ligne 3, which was completed in 2019 and helped to further connect once disparate parts of the city in a cohesive way.

The final two lines, 4 and 5, are now in the planning stages, and will round out the network.

Ligne 4 will sync Nice up with its neighbours in Saint-Laurent-du-Var and Cagnes-sur-Mer via 7.1km of new tracks and over a dozen extra stations while Ligne 5 will take the public transport network up into the Paillon Valley, stopping off in Saint-André-de-la-Roche, La Trinité and Drap.

Images of what this latter route – a deadline for which has been set for the far-off year of 2040 – have recently been shared online by the mayor of the city, Christian Estrosi, and provide a clear picture of how the tramline will connect with these areas.

THE LINE

Ligne 5 will extend from the station of the future Palais des Arts et de la Culture, formerly the Palais des Expositions, in Nice to the Mairie de Drap, some 7.5km away. The proposed route came about as the result of public opinion surveys as well as careful consideration by urban planners.

The route will be able to transport 45,900 passengers daily, says Estrosi, via a system of trams that will be running every eight minutes.

Environmental concerns are high on the list of priorities for the planners, who have been asked to minimise negative impacts on the local environment wherever possible. As such, a “green corridor” measuring 28,000m2 will be planted along the route, as well as 1,400 trees. A cycling path will also run the length of the tramway.

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