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Transportation

Fixing a Fractured Paris

In an effort to connect the historic city to its politically fragmented suburbs, Greater Paris is pushing an epic program of highway removal and transit revamps. But drivers fear that trying to fix one planning disaster could lead to another one.
The Gare de Lyon train station seen from the Pont Charles de Gaulle bridge in Paris. The city's grand ambitions to remove cars from the central city will rely heavily on building new transit lines.
The Gare de Lyon train station seen from the Pont Charles de Gaulle bridge in Paris. The city's grand ambitions to remove cars from the central city will rely heavily on building new transit lines.Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

The suburbs of Paris, home to over 10 million people, are not as universally loved as the central city they surround. The city’s Boulevard Périphérique beltway is a big reason why.

Walk towards the orbital road from the Porte de La Chapelle at rush hour and you feel like you’re a witness to a city engaging in an architectural and infrastructural race to the bottom. Elegant Haussmann-era buildings along the roadside give way abruptly to modernist boxes. Then the beltway’s tangle of lanes appears, an Amazon of asphalt, exhaust fug, and slow-moving metal. For pedestrians, the route north seems impenetrable, and the patchy provision of sidewalks and noise might rob anyone of the desire to forge on.