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Les Gets resort rejects 100% car usage !

Alain BOULOGNE - Officer for the mountains in the Rhône-Alpes Tourism Enginnering Mission (MITRA), Mayor of Les Gets in Haute-Savoie (France)

 

In the mountains as in other places, it is no longer possible to tolerate the sole use of cars as a means of transport. The example of the resort of Les Gets, within the ski area of Portes du Soleil, allows us to provide elements for considering the cohesion between different modes of transport, for better accessibility to tourism and recreational sites.

To access the international ski area of Portes du Soleil, and especially the resorts of Morzine, Avoriaz, and Les Gets, it is necessary to take a two-lane secondary highway for over eight kilometres through narrow gorges. There is no way to widen the route, except by cutting into the mountain. The traffic is heavy there (20,000 vehicles/day) during seasonal migrations, in particular the seventeen Saturdays of winter. The flow comes to a complete stop if snow falls during attendance peaks since, on a two-lane road, the snow removal service is blocked in the line of cars, themselves immobilised by the snow falling onto the sloping road (a scenario that occurs three or four times every winter).

By definition, the mountains are a fragile territory where geomorphologic constraints—continuous slopes—make space the most precious commodity. Having no mobility policy boils down to laissez-faire. It is the choice of 100% car usage, with vehicles that park willy-nilly, especially on the sidewalks, at the foot of the ski lifts, 4x4s everywhere, with day skiers’ cars saturating the rare available spaces...

The ideal situation would be for the cars, once arrived in the village, to remain for the duration of the holiday in the parking space at one’s lodging. This is far from being the case, since the community must plan at least one space in front of the grocery store and one at the ski lifts—or three parking spaces per vehicle. It should be remembered that, below the 1,500 m line of altitude, municipal real estate throughout the mountains had to be won square meter by square meter over private property.

The policy of 100% car usage leads to an impasse all the more serious since it is the opposite of the dream that drives vacationers to the mountains: to break with the daily life of the city and enjoy scenery that is not a cityscape. Today, many Parisians no longer possess a car and want to eat organic. All our vacationers live in highly urbanised environments where the culture of public transportation is highly developed. They expect to find the same services in the mountains. To be so deeply out of step with respect to these expectations simply means to disappoint these clients more and more.

Gradually, over thirty years, connections via the summits have been joining the French ski areas. Our Austrian, Swiss, Italian, and German competitors have not been able to achieve this kind of connection, which is now an asset for the French Alps, and the principal argument for attracting foreign skiers to our areas.

However, this advantage dwindles year by year. In fact, for twenty years our competitors have been conducting a voluntarist policy in order to reinforce low-lying connections, at the base of the valleys. In this matter they possess a culture and an expertise that neither France, nor the Rhône-Alpes region, nor the département of Haute-Savoie, nor the resorts have deemed useful at the moment to develop. The policy of 100% car usage is pushed to its breaking point. It is only at that time that it will be challenged.

These statements reveal a relatively new idea for the mountains, that of a territory’s load capacity. How do we calculate the point of development not to be exceeded, that would come to compromise the ability given to our children to continue to live on tourism in their area?

The load capacity is the threshold beyond which tourism activity “deforms” the site. It could be compared to material undergoing strain (stress) leading to the distortion of the material (impact), then its breaking (deterioration), or a return to its initial shape. To intervene in time, the manager must therefore obtain the relevant information that will allow the impact on the environment caused by the presence of visitors to be measured.“

The municipality of Les Gets has entered into the global approach of Agenda 21, examining itself in order to understand whether the peak of the curve of this load capacity has already been exceeded relative to its natural resources (damage to the landscape, control over new building permits, water supply, size and flow rate of the ski area, wastewater treatment plant, invasion by cars…).

What is Agenda 21? “In the environmental management of a territory, it is the implementation of a new economic approach, in the spirit of Rio, favouring a sustainable development that integrates the ideas of ecological costs. The preserved or recovered quality of the environment can then become the stake of a new growth likely to attract new investment, economic activity, and jobs.
(Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development, Local Agenda 21 in France, 1 March 2001, (www.ecologie.gouv.fr/article.php3?id_article= 1201)).

Another statement focuses on the difficulty for mountain territories to create an intercommunal cooperation that is truly functional. The day our children can go play football or play music in the next village without calling on a parent to drive, intercommunal cooperation (and intermodality) will have come to fruition.

Yet, before we even speak of intermodality, the first objective must be to optimise the occupancy of existing public transport. To attain this seemingly easy goal, it is necessary to revolutionise attitudes, to abandon the producer mindset, and to place the pedestrian at the centre of the debate.

Currently, buses circulate, leave on time, and arrive on time, but are empty. No one can criticise since the requirements proposed by the organising authority are being met. "We fly people, not planes", declared the head of airline company SAS fifteen years ago. This should constantly be recalled: the most important thing is not to make the ski lifts and the buses operate; it is to satisfy the client.

To attain the objective of intermodality, it is fundamental to establish at the outset a unique diagnosis on all modes of transportation that are an alternative to cars, for all scales of trips, and for all types of users. The second stage is to use precise figures to compare the alternative solution to cars. As a result, in the example of Portes du Soleil, it clearly appears that there is no coordination between the different links in the chain. There is only an adaptation in real time to train arrivals.

The avowed objective of this diagnosis is to make all the stakeholders (SNCF, organising authority, transporters, users, local authorities…) aware that solutions are possible, provided that they put together the pieces of the puzzle that each of them possesses.

The département, the organising authority for motor coach transportation, alone has the power to bring about these meetings in order to assemble the future requirements with all of the actors concerned, even if they are not all signatories. It must be the official sponsor of collective thought. It can be present at, absent, or excused from the meetings. It little matters from the moment that it becomes clear to everyone (and in particular to itself) that the fruit of this reflection is awaited and will be taken into account in compiling future specifications.

A dialogue “regulator” between the different parties is also necessary. It is not an issue of power (no need for a leader), but rather an economic and ecological stake in order to build, while respecting all the parts of the puzzle.

The legislator who devised how public transport for urban areas was organised must now attend to rural and mountain areas that are seeing considerable ebb and flow each week (50,000 people each winter Saturday for the valley of Morzine and Les Gets alone). At the moment, mountain areas do not enter into the criteria of urban transportation zones (which is the only regulatory tool so that buses can be made to circulate in an urban mode).

The Rhône-Alpes region, for its part, continues to underestimate the importance of such a territorial organisation. It has not understood that Europe favours this type of approach starting with the report from the field. The region must learn to guide emerging local projects. Its role is not exclusively to launch measures for which it would be the epicentre, but also to encourage experimental initiatives and to stimulate them through an active presence.

In short, it is first necessary to lower the barriers of habit rooted in custom and in the absence of analysis and anticipation (“it has always been done like this…”) in order to avoid complete saturation of the space. Next, it is necessary to make our major contacts (region, département) understand that our approach does not make an appeal to the ticket window (we do not want money), but more to the construction of a plan and its organisation.

So, what would be the possible solutions in the area of intermodality for the Portes du Soleil region?

Initial research would start with a close look at the schedule of all the larger vehicles that travel on the Thonon-Cluses route and departing from (and arriving at) the Geneva-Cointrin airport.

A basic idea could be to abandon buses dedicated to a certain group of clients (schoolchildren, for example) and to make public transport available to everyone on these routes. Once all buses are open to all potential clients, it would then be a matter of making the schedules simple and readable. Only regular intervals will allow the client to make his way around (the bus leaves on the hour and half-hour; there is no more searching through an indecipherable document).

In this context, the captive clientele (those without cars) are the key target clients and must be the subject of all our attention. These are: schoolchildren; youths without driver’s licenses; seniors who no longer drive in snow; the working population on the twice-daily journey between home and work; tourists coming from the Thonon, Cluses, and Lyon - Saint-Exupéry rail stations and the airports of Lyon - Saint-Exupéry and Geneva-Cointrin; skiers who missed the last cable car of the evening; day skiers with a combined transport-lift ticket package; tourists eager to explore a route with a panoramic view; hikers who are thus expanding their play area...

Briefly, we hypothesize that this potential is significant, taking into account the change in the relationship that urban populations maintain with cars and their growing sensitivity to environmental problems. In Germany and Austria, this proportion today reaches 20% for sites that began to organise themselves differently twenty years ago. (By way of example, the four major tour operators of Great Britain have offers on the first page of their 2005 catalogue favouring destinations that are taking measures to protect the environment.)

Of course, this does not mean making those clients most attached to their car abandon this mode of transportation, but rather to win over (or win back) those clients most sensitive to arguments of public transport.

Another idea consists in promoting the route served (for example "Thonon-Cluses"), rather than, as is currently the case, the name of the company managing the motor coach line (part of the stereotype of the producer mindset).

The major concern must remain the client, who needs to be reassured and informed well before the date of his stay: clarity of the service rendered and the destination, accuracy of the itinerary and the transportation time. (When an American client checks his luggage at Kennedy airport in New York, he finds it in his hotel room in Switzerland. In choosing a French resort, there is every chance—if he doesn’t carry it himself—that his luggage will get lost en route!)

In many current cases, public transport exists, and connections between train and motor coach are provided, but are not clear to the client.

Another main line of research would then be the creation of a “mobility centre” (an Internet site) to which the client could turn to obtain answers to his questions and find reassurance. This solution is directly inspired by the Satobus network serving the Lyon – Saint-Exupéry airport (unfortunately for Haute-Savoie, Saint-Exupéry only represents 20% of the air traffic; 80% comes through Geneva-Cointrin).

All these ideas are now the subject of a European INTERREG programme, Mobilalp, the leading partner of which is the département of Haute-Savoie. The first rounds of financing have taken a while to put together and are still incomplete.

We have seen action undertaken at the level of the département. And in the village of Les Gets, what can be done in the area of tourism servicing and intermodality? Since 2001, the municipality has been putting a lot of effort into a mode of development that takes into account social equilibrium and safety, respect for the environment, and long-term profitability, all at the same time.

This objective was clearly set down in the “Village 2003-2013 Project”. With the neighbouring community of Morzine, we are becoming a sort of pilot region, a mobility laboratory.

This is a serious challenge because it is a matter of encouraging residents and tourists to change their travel behaviour.

The first measures were taken starting in 2002, both in summer and winter. In particular, they were:

• preservation of traffic in the village centre, with a speed limit of 30 km/h;
• narrowing of the roadway with planters, without the possibility for parking, except for short-term stopping spaces, handicapped spaces, and loading zones;
• incentives for a better use of the village centre’s underground parking lot;
• the ability to close the road to traffic during events, with the organisation of supervisory and informational personnel. The resulting space won back on the roadway is given over to pedestrians;
• reinforcement of the local police;
• overnight parking prohibited, to facilitate snow removal.

It was during the first year, at the same time that modest encouragements were appearing from the clientele, that petitions from merchants were the most vicious.

The 2003-2004 measures concerned:

• the acquisition of a lot at the entrance to the village (350 parking spaces) served by a new 6-person chairlift to encourage day guests not to invade the centre of town. Acquisition of this lot was even more important as it was earmarked, in the purest real estate logic, for 27,000 square meters of floor space;
• the acquisition of a lot in the village centre for 100 elevated parking spots (the diagnosis established in 2001 reported a deficit of 1,500 parking spots);
• the creation of 1,500 meters of sidewalks to allow efficient snow removal and to encourage the pedestrian pathway;
• the doubling of the network of free shuttles that now offers a system at regular intervals, without set timetables.

The 2005 measures are:

- incentives for seasonal workers not to travel from their main homes via their own car, which remains unused all winter, parked illegally in the village centre (the ski lift company will now offer them train tickets);

• an expanded schedule of shuttles for personnel;
• the validation of calls for tenders for the pedestrian planning in the village centre (work begins 2006);
• the validation of calls for tenders for the creation of a second underground parking lot with 350 spaces(work begins 2007);

-   the creation of a “white lane”, a ski path to connect the two ski areas and maintain a snowy ambiance in the heart of the village.

As a result, with the Mobilalp approach, Les Gets and Morzine have entered into a sustainable development plan within the Alpine Pearls European network (with 25 destinations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France).

This involves proposing a sustainable mobility offer to our clients, combined with strong tourism appeal. In fact, the destinations of the Alpine Pearls network are undertaking to put the following measures in place:

-   reinforcement of the sustainable nature of the tourism offer;

• mobility systems for access to the village and access to the tourism resources located in the area around the resort;
• creation of information systems that will allow the mobility offer to be promoted, and the positioning of the resort to be reinforced.

To engage ourselves in such a challenge, alongside such renowned names as Cortina d’Ampezzo, Saint-Moritz, and the Dolomites (other resorts in the Alpine Pearls network) represents a unique opportunity to make up for the accumulated lost time in organising our offer.