The other day in the passenger seat: The route indicated by the sat nav is actually only five kilometers to the Place de la Bastille. Why is the calculated travel time then, please, 50 minutes? Definitely unreliable these things. Couldn’t be, but maybe a sweeper is trying to clean up the remains of a weekly market somewhere up there? Maybe a moving van, an accident or another demonstration or strike? A fire brigade siren rumbled in vain from behind. Yes, Lord God, one would avoid it, but how? Finally, a few meters ahead on the right: the white delivery van is about to pull out of a parking space. A little glimmer of hope, just park the car there, walk the last kilometer, save yourself another half an hour in a traffic jam. The nerves are on edge. Only five cars left to the damned gap, but in each phase of the traffic light only half a vehicle manages to push its way through the intersection, painfully and centimeter by cent. There, finally, the gap, but it turns out to be a delivery parking lot. All the same! By the time a tow truck gets through here, I’ll be back a long time.
The other day at the bicycle traffic light: Queuing in Paris has seldom been so nice. This moment when the crowd starts to sway, but surely, with a bold step on the pedals when the green is on. Magnifique. For many years, cycling in the French capital was rather lonely. Today you have to be highly concentrated in order to thread yourself into the long string of pearls of cyclists without accidents. The well-developed “Vélib” guide bike system has been in existence since 2007, along with bike paths and now even bike lanes. And yet, for a long time, it took a lot of daring to find your way through Parisian traffic between parked, moving, overtaking or oncoming vehicles. In the meantime, however, you are no longer alone. Due to the strikes against the pension reform, i.e. the week-long failure of the metro, and due to Corona, the number of bicycles in the city has increased by over 65 percent. Now there is this proud feeling of superiority when you cycle past the crawling sheet metal snakes or boldly take the right of way: “Your time is over! Now it’s ours, the street! “
Alexis Frémaux, president of the association “Mieux se déplacer à bicyclette” (Better on the road by bike) sees it like this: “Paris had to catch up from far behind. The change is impressive and has accelerated extremely, but nevertheless it remains dangerous on the bike with children and in many places. ”That means: Paris is far from Amsterdam! But Paris is no longer a life-threatening nightmare for cyclists like it was years ago. Instead, driving has become more arduous. The traffic turnaround, which has been strongly promoted in recent years, has reached a further high point in almost the entire city with the speed limit of 30 km / h that has been in force since summer. Only symbolically, because at an average speed of 11.6 km / h on the streets of Paris during the day, the speed limit does not actually change anything for drivers, you stand more than just driving.
The Joan of Arc of this transformation is called Anne Hidalgo and has been the mayor of Paris City Hall since 2014. Her predecessor, Bertrand Delanoë, also a socialist, campaigned for the reduction of car traffic and air pollution, but Hidalgo was the first to undertake the radical renovation measures and lead the toughest battles with her adversaries. For the conservative Republicans and their supporters, Anne Hidalgo has become a downright hateful figure. Their main argument is: The displacement of the automobile would give the socially deprived from the suburbs even less access to the capital.
Always alive
An informative intervention for politicians who primarily come from the bourgeoisie and who often belong to the financially higher earners. The car is a “symbol of autonomy and freedom”, has “allowed geographical and social emancipation”, writes the Institute for Economic Freedom (IREF), a kind of think tank of neoliberalism. The IREF wants to reduce the influence of the state and lower the tax burden. It laments: “Today drivers are found guilty of everything bad, from air pollution to accidents. This betrayal by the public sector is becoming harder and harder to bear. Anne Hidalgo is the undisputed number one among all car opponents: Ever tighter restrictions due to the speed limit, fewer and fewer lanes, no free parking spaces in the city: Everything is being done to stigmatize drivers and make driving in the city worse for them. “
But there is more. The fight against the car is the fight against freedom and individual responsibility. People are deprived of their right to escape the confines of the metro and to decide about their personal safety. People are forced to be passive in public transport. An anthropological conflict between driver and passenger manifests itself here. Really heavy artillery!
Hidalgo noticed that the traffic turnaround would not go smoothly when the Voie Georges Pompidou, the west-east expressway directly on the banks of the Seine, was closed in the 1960s as a symbol of modernity. It was not until 2017 that the banks of the Seine were opened exclusively to pedestrians again, accompanied by protests from angry motorists, who now had to plan significantly more time to cross the city. At the same time there was an open letter from 168 mayors of the surrounding communities who feared for the quality of life of their citizens due to the longer journeys to the capital. But the fact that Hidalgo was able to convince at least the Parisians with her policy in the end was proven by her re-election in 2020. Mobility was one of the big themes of the campaign. Hidalgo entered the race with the vision of a “city of fifteen minutes”: In future, everything important should be within 15 minutes’ walk, shopping, doctor visits, parks or the possibility of using a co-working workplace to avoid annoying journeys save. The concept does not rely solely on other forms of mobility, but simply on reducing them. The signs for this have never been as favorable as they are today, because since the Parisians began to feel painfully with the pandemic what a lack of parks and green spaces means for a big city, many have literally been willing to change their saddles.
A ban on diesel vehicles from 2024 and a general ban on internal combustion engines from 2030 should make Paris a carbon-neutral metropolis. In order to guarantee mobility, the expansion of the metro network is being massively promoted under the label “Paris Express”. In other words, four new lines lead to a route network that has been extended by a good 200 kilometers. The Olympic Games in three years have accelerated the pace again. The aim of the games is to be the most sustainable that has ever existed and to send the image of a green, livable city out into the world. In line with this, the city center will become a “zone à trafic limité” in the coming months, a traffic-calmed zone in which many streets are reserved exclusively for pedestrians and cyclists.
Pierre Chasseray, spokesman for the “40 millions d’automobilistes” association, paints a gloomy picture of the future against this backdrop and declares himself to be the advocate of suburban residents and tourists who are deprived of the joy of visiting the capital. “The city withdraws into itself, the city of lights will gradually go out. Without suburbanites, who are no longer wanted here. Paris under a bell. (…) Avoided by tourists who feel more welcome elsewhere: a dead city. Not even a city anymore, the shadow of a city. ”However, those who use one of the more than 9,000 parking spaces these days, which have been converted into café terraces for more Corona distances, who walk on Canal Saint-Martin in the middle of the car-free street, who on cycle along the Rue de Rivoli past the Tuileries Gardens, it has a completely different feeling: Paris is alive and well.
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