Skip to main content

Paris to ‘get rid of 70,000 parking spaces’

Squeeze on cars continues in '15-minute city' under Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo
By Adam Hill October 21, 2020 Read time: 2 mins
Parisiens! Enjoy all these while you still can (© Uatp1 | Dreamstime.com)

Paris is to remove around half of its 140,000 car parking spaces under a scheme by Socialist party mayor Anne Hidalgo to make the city more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly.

The figure of 70,000 was announced by David Belliard, deputy mayor with responsibility for transport, mobility and transforming public space.

Residents of the French capital will be consulted on how they want to see the new space used.

Belliard tweeted that it was a priority to "protect the most vulnerable in public space, and in particular pedestrians".

Hidalgo was re-elected for a second term earlier this year, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the plan is to repurpose the parking places for other uses by the time of the next election.

Supported by Greens such as Belliard, Hidalgo made transport and pollution central to her campaign through the “15-minute city” concept.

This envisages a city where inhabitants can meet all needs – food, work, recreation, culture and so on – within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from home.

Already, Paris has seen more road space given over to bicycles and pedestrians.

During the election, Hidalgo said: “It’s out of the question to think that arriving in the heart of the city by car is any sort of solution.”

In her election night victory speech she told supporters: “You have chosen a Paris that can breathe.”

 

 

Related Content

  • December 1, 2020
    Personal sensor moves smart cities forward
    Open-seneca is a portable air quality monitor designed to pinpoint emission hotspots and drive behavioural change - and Swedish capital Stockholm is trying it out, writes Adam Hill
  • January 20, 2012
    Home based real time travel information drives reduction in car use
    David Crawford investigates a new approach to discouraging car use - the 'kitchen as travel centre'. ITS technology working together with UK planning legislation is driving an innovative 'kitchen as travel centre' approach to home design which is boosting public transport as an alternative to car use. The combination is already proving powerful enough to assuage environmentalist opposition to major urban developments. It is also being seen as a way of delivering wider social and community benefits inside an
  • January 10, 2013
    Need for simpler urban tolling solutions
    A common assumption, even amongst informed observers, is that there’s but a handful of urban charging schemes in operation around the world and scant prospect of that changing any time soon. Larger city-sized schemes such as Singapore, London and Stockholm come readily to mind but if we take a wider view and also consider urban access control and Low Emission Zones (LEZs) then the picture changes rather radically. There is a notable concentration of such schemes in Europe but worldwide the number is comfort
  • August 21, 2013
    Tirana sets direction for road network development
    The population of the Albanian capital, Tirana has grown rapidly in the past twenty years and the main form of mobility has changed from walking to driving. With 140,000 motor vehicles now on Tirana's roads, traffic jams and parking problems have become a major problem, while pedestrian areas and cycle lanes are disorganised or non-existent. The city’s new urban development plan proposes a number of measures, with a focus primarily on the road network and, to a lesser degree, on sustainable modes of