Paris mayor wants to lower speed limit on city's ring road from 70 to 50 kilometres/hour

Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, wants to lower the speed limit of the capital's ring road from 70 to 50 kilometres/hour.

At its creation in 1973, the periphery was intended to facilitate travel in the capital. Today, this eternally bottled urban highway is especially the daily nightmare for the 1.1 million drivers who use it every day, as well as for the 100,000 residents living along 35 kilometres of asphalt.

On Tuesday, the PS mayor of the capital, Anne Hidalgo, should take up a large part of the conclusions of the information and evaluation mission (IPM) launched in the autumn and involving elected representatives from all political groups of the Paris Council.

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This mission proposes in particular by 2020/2030 to lower the speed of 70 to 50 kilometres/hour and reduce the number of lanes to twice three lanes (against 4 to 5 in some places now), one of which will be reserved "clean" vehicles (carpooling, electric cars, hybrids, public transport, etc).

It also advocates the prohibition of the ring road to heavy goods in transit, the establishment of noise barriers or the filtering of the air in tunnels.

The recommendations are to be discussed at the next Paris Council on 11 June. Anne Hidalgo hailed from the end of April an approach that "will concretely improve the living environment of the many inhabitants who live near this road".

On the environmental front, the situation is alarming: Paris is one of the most polluted cities in Europe, and its air quality is lower than that of Rome, according to a Greenpeace report published in 2018.

Beyond pollution "atmospheric, sound and visual", the device is also, according to the MIE, "a cultural break", separating the capital from its suburbs.