Mayor Anne Hidalgo's latest effort to rein in car use and fight pollution would prevent non-residents from driving across the French capital's city center in 2022.
The plan would stop through traffic from a large zone covering Paris' core, cut pollution, reduce noise and free up more space for trees, cycle lanes, and pedestrian areas. Public consultation for the plan launched this week.
Bloomberg reports the car-calmed zone is seen as a new tool to fend off a post-pandemic car comeback within Paris' innermost ring of boulevards.
Elsewhere in Europe, other cities are also seeking to curb traffic. Oslo will start to phase out access for fossil-fueled vehicles in 2022, while London and Milan have employed congestion charges for cars driving into their centers for several years. Within France, the cities of Lille and Nantes already have a low-speed limit and pedestrian-priority zones covering their downtowns.
Look for this trend of car-calmed zones to spread to North America soon, with population-dense cities of the Northeast leading the way.
Paris will ban through traffic in the city center
