• The Calmed Zone, a former limited traffic zone, aims to ban all transit routes in Paris Center and on a small portion of the left bank.

  • Last spring, the commissioning was announced for this year.

    Finally, it will be for the beginning of 2024.

  • For Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy, this "flagship project of this mandate" must allow "the reduction of the place of the car".

A new name but not much more.

Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy mayor of Paris, presented this Thursday the main lines of the Peaceful Zone project, formerly a limited traffic zone (ZTL).

Overall it takes up those of the ZTL, presented last May, since it is the same perimeter that prevails, namely Paris Center and the left bank included north of Boulevard Saint-Germain.

The main difference is due to the calendar which has been "relaxed" according to the beautiful expression of the First Deputy.

Understand, the implementation announced for 2022 will take place rather at the beginning of 2024 while respecting “the commitment to do it before the Olympics”.

This is to ensure “the legal robustness of the project” and allow “more discussions”.

Changing behaviors

As a reminder, in this famous Peaceful Zone, motorized vehicles in transit will be banned.

This must meet five objectives, according to Emmanuel Grégoire.

The first is the “fight against air pollution and noise pollution”.

According to figures from David Belliard, transport assistant, 50% of the 350,000 to 550,000 motorized journeys in Paris Center are transit.

The second objective is “the improvement and fluidification of soft modes of transport by inducing behavioral changes”.

Then comes the desire to "recover space for the benefit of pedestrians and nature in the city", "facilitate the movement of users who go to and move around this area, including by car", and finally the " commercial and tourist revitalization”.

Moreover Ariel Weil, mayor of Paris Center, specifies that this project is “the opposite of a devitalization” and aims to “avoid the museumification of the sector”.

Random checks

Concretely, only “emergency vehicles, buses, bicycles, taxis, VTC, car-sharing, people with reduced mobility” will be authorized to circulate in transit”, specifies David Belliard.

Exit the scooters.

To enforce the rules, the town hall favors “the simplest possible systems”, according to Emmanuel Grégoire.

There will therefore be random checks at the exit of the zone where it will be necessary to present, for example, a parking ticket or a store invoice.

But the municipality is also looking at automatic systems such as plate reading.

But warns Emmanuel Grégoire, "we first want to do pedagogy, especially in the first weeks, before entering a logic of verbalization".

On the question of a possible transfer of transit traffic to other districts, Emmanuel Grégoire assures that the first studies carried out have “very promising” results but without specifying them further.

According to him, if he makes them public, this could encourage some to ask for the passage of all Paris in a peaceful zone.

A version that the opposition group Changer Paris finds difficult to believe, which in a press release says it "categorically opposes the project".

The group assures that “residents of peripheral districts will suffer from traffic reports and the extension of their car journeys”.

At the same time, the opposition denounces “the progressive isolation of the center of Paris for the benefit of a small CSP + elite, young and healthy people who have the means to live in this area.

»

The rather circumspect prefecture

Regardless of the criticism, the municipality is determined to carry out its project and will launch an impact study in the first half of 2022 in conjunction with the Paris police headquarters (PP) to estimate the consequences of this project, before follow up with a public inquiry at the end of 2022-beginning of 2023.

The problem is that in a press release, the police headquarters, which shares traffic jurisdiction with the town hall, ensures that "the prefect of police has not been seized of a specific file including in particular the impacts of this measure on vehicle flows and traffic reports”.

Worse, the press release states that "the current characteristics of the project risk creating difficulties for the movement of emergency and police services on the outskirts of the area, and could also have a negative impact on the economic activity of the capital". .

Obviously the PP was not seduced by the arguments of Emmanuel Grégoire.

Consequently, “the prefect of police expresses strong reservations about the project as envisaged”.

Which could explain the postponement to 2024, just to get everyone to agree.

Politics

Paris: The town hall wants to ban cars in transit from the center of the capital in 2022

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  • David Belliard

  • Pollution

  • Paris

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