In Nice, anti-bike coatings installed on tram tracks

To discourage bicycles and scooters from using tramways, Nice is opting for a radical solution: installing a rough surface between the tracks. If the experiment proves successful, these anti-bike installations will expand over the coming months.

While bike users have a more favorable carbon footprint than motorists, when it comes to obeying traffic laws, they have nothing to teach anyone. In Nice and elsewhere, some of them do not hesitate to take the tram lanes, causing a significant number of accidents. Facing this problem, the municipality has decided to install anti-bike surfaces, which also target scooter users. These 5-meter-long installations are made of concrete tiles embedded with large pebbles, which are particularly uncomfortable to ride over on bikes or scooters.

“A thousand two-wheel vehicles without engines pass through this avenue every day. There are routes where no one should go; it’s individualism, selfishness,” criticized Gaël Nofri, president of Régie Lignes d’Azur, speaking to France Bleu. “Bikes on the tram axis have caused eight personal injuries and 24 service interruptions in a year. This penalizes thousands of users and results in lost revenue. We want to break this phenomenon.”

The city of Nice ready to repeat the experiment

Nice has started a three-month trial phase on two sections of avenue Jean Médecin. If the test is successful, these anti-bike installations will multiply throughout the city. According to Gaël Nofri, “the goal is to install 25 or 27 on avenue Jean Médecin, then in Gorbella and Place Masséna.”

The two sections on avenue Jean Médecin cost €70,000 out of the €700,000 budget allocated for the entire project.

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