NICE ENOUGH FOR NICE?
Nice has become a worldwide reference for its Smart City initiative, designed to respect the environment and improve the life of the city’s residents. So how does the arrival of the logistical behemoth that is the Tour de France square with this policy?
The most striking contradiction of the Tour de France is that there are 14 times as many motor vehicles on the race as there are riders on bikes. In 2019, approximately 2,500 were accredited, including team cars, photo and TV bikes, VIP vehicles, press cars, dozens of extraordinary-looking contraptions within the publicity caravan, and hundreds of trucks transporting the whole shebang around France for three and a half weeks. The Tour is, in short, hardly an advert for the environmental benefits of the bicycle.
This contrast will look even more stark when the race lumbers into Nice at the end of August for the grand départ. Over the past decade, the Provençal city has reinvented itself as “Nice Smart City”, installing 3,000 information sensors that allow it to reduce water consumption, cut energy usage, cope more easily with issues relating to waste and, at the same time, to develop a multimodal transport system designed to improve environmental markers in order to improve the quality of life of the Niçois, and to respond to climate concerns. The initiative is supported by locally based tech companies including Orange, Véolia and IBM, and includes the construction of a state-of-the-art tram system designed to reduce car usage.
This project has accumulated a number of awards for its groundbreaking approach to urban planning and development. These include Nice’s recognition as one of the 10 most innovative cities in Europe, which has led to planners from across Europe and beyond to travel to the Côte d’Azur to see the progress that has been made and assess how it could be applied in their own urban areas. All of which might well make you wonder why Nice’s mayor Christian Estrosi, the local council and the departmental and regional councils have been so keen to attract an event with a caravan that’s likely to be at least 2,000 vehicles-strong even in what is likely to be its slimmed down post-coronavirus state.
Surprisingly, given Nice’s long and very wellestablished popularity as a tourist destination, Estrosi insists that marketing of the city is the principal reason for the €3.55 million price of hosting the grand départ. A charismatic former Moto GP racer who’s been the mayor for almost all of the period since 2008, he believes that attracting events with a global profile such as the Tour are fundamental to Nice retaining its high profile. Yet he admits there’s another side to it as well, much more in keeping with the Nice Smart City project.
“We’re going to graft onto this grand départ a whole communication plan focusing on electro-mobility, bicycle mobility, zero plastic and make the Tour’s opening days a very virtuous event, without any straws or plastic cups, for example. We will also ensure that everyone travels with our electric shuttles or public transport. We should no longer think it’s possible for a major event to leave a big carbon footprint,” Estrosi told Nice-Matin.
Given the immensity of the Tour’s entourage, it might be assumed that ASO would feel a little uncomfortable with Nice’s desire to graft a raft of green measures onto the event. However, the Tour’s organisers have spent the last decade steadily extending their event’s green credentials. For those watching the race from outside France, these might appear minimal, amounting to little more than the introduction of a large net at the end of feed zones into which riders can toss unwanted bottles and food wrappers.
Yet, their commitment to raising awareness of environmental concerns and boosting the profile of cycling as a sport, leisure activity and a means of transport are much more evident on the roads and in the stage towns that host the race.
The Tour’s Riding into the Future policy is the basis for this commitment. It rests on four pillars: the first a commitment to the planet and environmental protection; the second to helping local authorities develop the infrastructure required to make cycling safe in towns and cities; the third on raising awareness about riding among France’s younger generations; and the fourth supporting moves to promote cycling’s health benefits across the population.
As part of this strategy, about 80 per cent of stage towns now host a Fête du Tour over a weekend about a month before the race takes place, celebrating all aspects in cycling. Take Foix, for example, a stage finish in 2017 and again in 2019. Prior to the first of those stages, the departmental council of the Ariège organised a ride over the 100-kilometre stage route between Saint Girons and Foix that culminated with a festival of cycling at the end designed to encourage new converts to the bike. Two years on, it closed the finish climb of Prat d’Albis to traffic so that local cyclists could ride to the summit on bikes and e-bikes. On both occasions, the emphasis was on participation rather than competition.
During the race itself, further initiatives are designed to raise awareness of the environment and the protective role that the bike can play. Each day’s live broadcast on France Télévisions begins with the Tour de France of Biodiversity, a programme highlighting a protected area through which the race will pass that day and illustrating the work of the environmental agencies preserving France’s natural heritage. Other programmes that run during the Tour promote the bike for daily commuting and attempt to raise awareness of safety issues through the Route Se Partage (Sharing the Road) campaign.
There is, though, a widely held perception within France that the Tour needs to do much more to not only to promote environmental awareness, but also to radically reduce the footprint La Grande Boucle leaves on the country each year. The race’s publicity caravan has provoked particular concern. Last year, 34 deputies from the French parliament called on ASO to halt the distribution of the “18 million goodies that are handed out and thrown into the environment”, highlighting above all the quantity of plastic objects that the 31 companies within the caravan use to promote their brands.
Tour boss Christian Prudhomme responded to the plea by drawing attention to the initiatives that ASO have put in place to reduce the caravan’s use of plastic. “Within the measures and norms that we require our partners to adhere to, we’ve introduced an obligation to commit to reducing the use of plastic,” he said, pointing out that some products that had previously been bagged such as T-shirts and hats were now distributed without any wrapping at all. “We’ve also had a policy in place for five years now where, with the cooperation of our partners, the number of plastic gifts given to the public has been reduced.” This has led to a cut in the number of freebies handed out to 15 million in 2019. He added that marketing brochures have been banned completely. “We understand your concerns and share them and we are committed to continuing to improve our actions in this domain,” Prudhomme concluded.
The day before making this statement, he had also announced that following a consultation with vehicle partner Skoda the race organisation would be switching to hybrid cars over the following two years, a significant move given they make up 10 per cent of the Tour’s entourage. The greening of this aspect of the race also includes the promotion of alternative means of transport where possible, including the use of shuttle buses and ski lifts by media and Tour guests, as well as the provision of courses on environmentally responsible driving for all drivers in the race convoy in order to lower fuel consumption.
“Every year that goes by, people’s attitudes change,” says Karine Bozzacchi, who is responsible for environmental issues at the Tour and other ASO events. She points to the fact that it until recently lots of fans would leave their rubbish at the roadside, but most now take it away with them. The debris that’s left either gets picked up by Tour staff travelling behind the race (they clear the road and a metre either side of it) or by staff and volunteers working for the 700-plus communes along the route. According to Bozzachi, more than 50 per cent of the waste that ASO collects, amounting to more than six tonnes each day, gets recycled. “We have to remember that the road is our playground and respect that,” she says.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, attitudes have changed in France and quite dramatically so with regard to the environment. Previously a comparatively peripheral political concern, it has taken on a more central focus, prompting French president Emmanuel Macron to propose a huge post-lockdown financial stimulus designed to hasten the greening of France’s economy. At the same time, France’s towns and cities are turning more of their streets over to cyclists. This presents ASO and the Tour with an opportunity, to both benefit and lead in this green revolution. So long a barometer of French life, the Tour now needs to emulate Nice with smart initiatives of its own, restating and increasing its relevance as a sporting event.