To “appease” the boulevard, the mayor gives priority to the establishment of a path reserved for carpooling.
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Motorists can rejoice: when the device is not saturated, they will be able to continue to perform some speed points. In the immediate future, Anne Hidalgo no longer plans to lower the maximum speed on the Grand Boulevard which belt Paris. “It may come later”, but “this is not the subject today,” said the mayor of the capital on Wednesday, May 18, by presenting her projects to transform this urban highway inherited from the 1970s.
Between the two rounds of the 2020 municipal elections, the socialist candidate had however made the decrease in speed on the “peripheh” a flagship measure of her joint program with environmentalists. Going from a maximum of 70 km/h to only 50 km/h was presented as a decisive way to “soothe” the device, limit accidents and fight against atmospheric and sound pollution from hundreds of thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands residents. It was a question of quickly transforming the long serpent of 35 kilometers into a classic boulevard, with lights, easy to cross for pedestrians. “In six years, it’s playable,” pleaded Jean-Louis Missika, one of Anne Hidalgo’s main assistants, who imagined reducing the speed from the first year of the new mandate.
In reality, the crisis linked to the COVID-19, then the presidential campaign delayed decisions. Above all, the elected officials measured how much the project to decrease the speed goes wrong in opinion, and risked coming up against oppositions. Today, the town hall still stresses that “130,000 residents are exposed to pollution levels above the ceilings of European standards”. However, the question of speed has been dismissed. “You have to move forward by first using the consensus points,” argues David Belliard, the environmental assistant in charge of transport.
a million vehicles circulating per day
Priority thus comes back to the less client idea to better organize the use of the device. First step: during the Olympic Games in the summer of 2024, a track will be reserved for vehicles of athletes and all those who revolve around the event. The state has given its agreement, and a decree has just been published. A device of cameras that read the license plates for authorized vehicles is under study.
Once the games have been completed, this path should be perpetuated and reserved for carpooling, taxis and public transport. Today, a million vehicles run every day on the boulevard. On board, 82 % are single people. A reserved route of this type is already in place at peak hours on the A48, 10 km upstream from Grenoble. In North America, this practice has existed since the 1970s. In Europe, Spain adopted it in the late 1990s, in particular to relieve the entrance to Madrid. For this path, it would take so -called “intelligent” cameras, which would count the number of people on board.
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