The endless and necessarily passionate debates about the place given to the car in Paris – and in Greater Paris – have begun again since the decision of Anne Hidalgo, mayor (Socialist Party) of the capital, to reduce the speed to 50 kilometers per hour. on the ring road, starting Tuesday the 1stAhem October. The municipal decree was to appear in Official bulletin of the city of ParisMonday. Some paragraphs to eliminate the 70 kilometers per hour previously in force on the urban highway, which had already replaced, in 2014, the 80 kilometers per hour limit signs. However, the implementation must be gradual, between now and October 10, in sections, starting in the East, while the panels are changed.
“Unilateral decision”, “antisocial measure”They continue to denounce the opponents, starting with the employers and Valérie Pécresse, president (Les Républicains) of the Ile-de-France region. As soon as he was appointed, the new Minister of Transport, François Durovray, one of his closest friends, amplified the echo of discontent. The mayor of Paris cannot decide alone, this concerns all the inhabitants of the Ile-de-France, he says. Almost the same arguments and criticisms were put forward during the pedestrianization of waterways in 2016. The city of Paris responded to public health and the capital’s necessary adaptation to climate change. Administrative justice had been referred. In 2019, the socialist-ecologist-communist majority won its case, offering walkers, runners, local residents and tourists the opportunity to enjoy the river away from the cars, relegated to the high docks.
Furthermore, addressing the ring road, which travels 1.1 million daily trips, is delicate. We touch a symbol. The 35 kilometer ring that surrounds the capital, whose construction began in the mid-1950s and ended in 1973, not only embodies the decades of the reigning automobile and the imagination of freedom and modernity that accompanies it.
It is also this physical and mental barrier, between Paris and the suburbs, the capital and “the others”, to which tensions and resentments cling. Elected officials are quick to do so. When urban planners see, in the future of this saturated highway around which more than half a million people live, the embodiment of the debate common to metropolises: how will dense areas function between now and 2050?
Review in one year
The matter is so sensitive that consultations have been held. In 2019, the Paris Council had its information mission. The same year, the Greater Paris Metropolitan Forum (City, State, Region and Communities) invited four international teams to reflect on the future of the Ile-de-France motorways. In 2022, the Paris Urban Planning Workshop (APUR), the metropolitan planning agency, published the White Paper for the ring road, following a series of workshops with elected officials and residents of neighboring municipalities.
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