INFO BFM PARIS ÎLE-DE-FRANCE – They have submitted a wish to this effect to the Paris City Council. A text that also defends the objective of “10% of journeys made by bike” and free transportation until the end of the Paralympic Games.
No less than 15 million visitors are expected in Paris in the summer of 2024 for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Good news for the finances of hoteliers, restaurant owners, and traders in the capital. And a headache for public authorities: how to organize traffic in Paris during the six weeks of competition?
The answer to this question has not been revealed by the city hall and the prefecture of police at this stage. But the Green Party elected officials of the Paris City Council have their own idea. As part of the municipal majority, they express a wish for a “Car-Free Paris” operation, which would extend from the opening of the Olympic Games to the closing of the Paralympic Games.
The text, led by Sylvain Raifaud, Frédéric Badina-Serpette, and Fatoumata Koné, also reiterates “the objective of 10% of journeys made by bike during the Games and the need to ensure the creation of temporary parking spaces accordingly.”
And, above all, it advocates for the Île-de-France Mobilités board of directors to offer “free public transportation during the period” of the competitions. With an idea for financing: “the implementation of an eco-contribution on e-commerce delivery sites.”
To motivate their pleas, the Green Party elected officials rely on a two-part argument. They highlight, on the one hand, the “very constrained journeys” that will result from the “exceptional flows” of tourists in the capital. These would be complicated by road traffic.
The measures proposed by the authors of the wish, they hope, will help streamline traffic, especially for “security services, emergency services, and essential logistical transportation for the functioning of a city like Paris during the Games.” They would also guarantee “the smooth flow of public transportation, people with disabilities, craftsmen, and healthcare professionals.”
The safety of pedestrians and cyclists is also at stake, warn the environmentalists, a particularly vulnerable group to cars. These are usually missions performed by the prefecture, according to the text’s proponents.
Not surprisingly, the motivations of the environmentalists are also of an environmental nature. If the city has set the goal of organizing “green” and “accelerators of ecological transition” Games, the authors are concerned about the carbon emissions generated by the two sporting events.
They are estimated at “1.58 Megatonnes,” or “1.5 times the emissions caused by the fires in Greece in July 2023, which already constituted a record in themselves for the past two decades according to the European program Copernicus.”
The temporary removal of cars from the Parisian landscape, the Paris City Council’s environmentalists continue, would also protect the capital from recurring pollution spikes in the summer. As was the case in early September at the start of the Rugby World Cup.
This would finally fulfill the promise made by Clément Beaune at the same time. The Minister of Transportation, during a meeting of the Strategic Committee for Olympic and Paralympic Mobility, and later in an interview on Télématin, praised Games that are “bike-friendly” and “100% public transportation.”
The wish will be reviewed at the next session of the Paris City Council, scheduled for next week, from October 3 to 6.
Nicolas Dumas with Florian Bouhot
