On the Paris ring road, May 11, 2020. THOMAS SAMSON / AFP
And suddenly, the question of lowering the authorized speed to 50 kilometers per hour on the Paris ring road comes back into the news. Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo made it a flagship measure of her program with environmentalists during the 2020 campaign, but put it aside in May 2022, even as she detailed the city’s projects to transform this urban highway. inherited from the 1970s. The minds are not ready, let’s move forward first on the points of consensus, she explained.
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And now the subject resurfaces, Tuesday November 22, during the presentation of the 500 measures of the new climate plan (2024-2030) of the capital. Alongside the mayor of Paris, Dan Lert, deputy for ecological transition, explains that they ” advance[nt] on the transformation of the ring road, with the establishment of the lane dedicated to carpooling and public transport, and the speed limit to 50 km/h on this major axis”. And as always, with this subject, everything gets carried away.
If the question of 50 km/h is raised again, it is because it is directly linked to the development of a priority lane reserved for athletes and their companions for the Olympic and Paralympic games of Paris 2024. Paris town hall has always said it wants to perpetuate this arrangement – required by the International Olympic Committee – and dedicate this left lane to public transport, taxis, and carpooling (two people on board minimum), once the competition is over.
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The plan was presented in April. The lane will be activated during the week, in the morning and at the end of the day, depending on traffic. The checks will be carried out using cameras financed by Solideo, the Olympic works delivery company. The debate on speed was not settled at the time. But Cerema, which brings together the former technical directorates of the State, recommended moving to 50 km/h for safety reasons.
Obvious public health reasons
Dialogue was supposed to resume with suburban elected officials, but the presentation of the climate plan came first. Wednesday November 23, Emmanuel Grégoire, Anne Hidalgo’s first deputy, David Belliard (transport) and Dan Lert (ecological transition), repeated the need for these measures to fight climate change, but also for obvious reasons of public health . 550,000 people, far from being the most privileged, live glued to the busiest motorway in Europe on which nearly 1.2 million journeys are made per day, a large part of which are solo.
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