Program for the first crossings in the summer of 2021, then in early 2022, the project for a maritime service to Monaco from Nice is still in dry dock. He will have to wait several more years. A first call for tenders launched by the Lignes d’Azur board for a boarding that it wishes to be “green” had yielded nothing. A second remained just as “unsuccessful”. And for good reason, such a service does not yet exist.

Faced with these failures, the Nice Côte d’Azur metropolis organized a “sourcing”. And according to the manufacturers consulted, “the commissioning of a regular hydrogen or 100% electric shuttle offer integrated into public transport”, would not be operational until after 2026, informed 20 minutes.

Boats equipped with hydrofoils

In the meantime, to find a way at sea to decongest access to Monaco, “the short-term paths favored by the metropolis, in connection with the Principality, are to carry out experiments on the body of water”, specifies- she. In particular thanks to boats equipped with hydrofoils, a kind of underwater wings.

Among them, the metropolis evokes the carbon-free invention of an American society, which nicepresse.com revealed a few days ago. Regent Craft, which had brought one of its models to the Transition Forum, a trade show organized in Nice last week, is developing “a high-speed half-boat, half-plane transport” which travels at “more than 200 km/h at a speed of point and 2.50 m above the water”, according to the community.

Estrosi bets on an experiment in 2024

Trials will be launched in Florida. They will concern a prototype making it possible to embark initially twelve passengers, then 100, in the long term, to advance the metropolis. She specifies that Christian Estrosi has concluded “an agreement” with this company “to test this new mode of transport from Nice” in 2024 and thus achieve “a very first in Europe”.

The solution, which could be operational in 2027 for passenger transport, could connect Nice to Monaco in a record time of twenty minutes.