The Paris traffic commissioner has confirmed that the 30 km/h speed limit will be extended across almost the entire city by the end of the year.
The narrow streets of Montmartre, certainly. But also the tourist districts of the historic centre. And the residential ones scattered throughout the city. By the end of the year, in Paris it will only be possible to travel at 30 km/h. The speed limit, as is already the case in other French cities, will in fact be generalised across the entire urban area, except for a few major roads where it will still be possible to reach 50 km/h.
The desire to adopt the measure – revolutionary, because it had never been envisaged for an urban centre of the size of the French capital – was announced by transport commissioner David Belliard, of the party Europe Ecologie – Les Verts (the French Greens).
Last autumn, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo had decided to organise an online public consultation on this proposal. More than 5,700 people took part. The "survey" showed that the city's residents are not all convinced of the merits of the measure: on the contrary, citizens were split down the middle, 50 per cent in favour and 50 per cent against.
Nevertheless, Hidalgo and Belliard have decided to press ahead with the introduction of "zones 30". After all, this is a policy already in place across 60 per cent of Parisian territory, and one that in some arrondissements (as is the case with the eleventh, in the eastern part of the city) is already almost universal.
"This measure will make traffic flow more smoothly, limiting in particular dangerous accelerations. In the coming weeks we will open discussions on the subject with the police," said the commissioner. Speaking before the Paris city council, he also noted that the average speed of cars travelling across the city is around 15 km/h. For drivers, therefore, nothing will change in terms of journey times. What can be avoided is sharp acceleration and braking causing noise and environmental pollution. Accidents can also be reduced.
The same choice was made five years ago, in 2016, in the city of Grenoble, governed by the ecologist mayor Eric Piolle. He, at the time, had similarly emphasised, in an interview given to the television channel Lci, that "what changes is not so much the average speed: in Grenoble we were moving at 18.9 kilometres per hour, accounting for stops and traffic, and with the new limits this drops to 17.3. What really changes is the approach to the urban centre. The way of paying attention to others, especially pedestrians and cyclists."
In an interview with Lifegate, the same mayor added: "I was a teenager when the change to 50 km/h happened: even then it took a little time. But it is precisely the slow changes that are the most lasting. And ours is an ambitious project: we want to change the very relationship between the population and the city."
Paris is also considering the possibility of lowering speed limits on the circular ring road that skirts the city, the boulevard périphérique. Currently it is not possible to exceed 70 km/h. By moving to 50 km/h, according to the city administration, the noise generated by traffic could be reduced by 3 decibels.
