2023-09-28 17:56:28
How will we travel by car during the 2024 Olympic Games, for which 15 million visitors are expected in Paris? The elected environmentalists of the Paris Council have found a simple answer: we will not do it. David Belliard, deputy (EELV) to the mayor in charge of mobility, wants to establish a “Paris breathes” system during the Games which consists of… Leaving all cars in the parking lot in the capital.
In the environmentalist wish submitted this Thursday and carried by Sylvain Raifaud, Frédéric Badina-Serpette and Fatoumata Koné, elected officials plead for a “Paris without cars” operation covering the entire period of the Games, i.e. six weeks. “We organize a car-free day every year throughout Paris and one Sunday per month on the Champs-Élysées. (…) We will be able to create this Paris without cars during the six weeks when the Games will take place,” Fatoumata Kone, president of the environmental group, argued this Thursday in the preamble to the Paris Council.
Make public transport free?
The environmentalists motivate their proposal, which will be debated in the Paris Council next week, by the risk of pollution peaks and the desire of the mayor of Paris to make “Green Games, accelerators of the ecological transition”. They also highlight possible traffic difficulties due to security perimeters established around the Olympic sites, and the need to encourage “a shift to public transport, cycling or walking”.
They also intend to make public transport free during this period. Free which would be financed by the establishment of an eco-tax on deliveries from e-commerce sites.
“The Lépine competition for eccentric proposals”
The proposal did not fail to annoy part of the executive, starting with the first deputy mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire, according to whom the environmentalists’ proposal is “unrealistic”. “The next time David Belliard has something to propose, let him talk to the mayor about it rather than going to do it on a television set,” said this last Thursday afternoon, after David Belliard defended this traffic restriction plan on the plateau of BFM Paris Wednesday evening.
“We are working closely with the police headquarters on the organization of the Olympic Games, both to ensure that it goes as smoothly as possible for the athletes, while limiting the nuisance and negative impacts for Parisians,” insists Emmanuel Grégoire. We work on security perimeters on a case-by-case basis. In certain areas, there is a question of pedestrianization and of promoting soft mobility in others not,” specifies the elected official.
Also on the right, the proposal from elected environmentalists raises strong opposition. “The car-free day caused incredible chaos on the outskirts of Paris. Even taxis could not enter the capital. This wish of environmentalists appears in the Lépine competition for eccentric proposals,” quips David Alphand, vice-president of the Changer Paris group at the Council of Paris.
#Paris #Olympics #elected #environmentalists #plead #carfree #city #competition