Paris Speeds Up its Pursuit of a Slower Beltway

Like so many cities, Paris is girdled by beltways — several of them, in fact. The innermost and most notorious one is known as the Boulevard Périphérique, a 22-mile-long ring road completed in 1973 and built in part upon the footprint of the city’s historic walls. The traffic-clogged urban highway plays a major role in Parisian mobility, but it’s also a prime contributor of pollution, both atmospheric and aural, as well as an all-but-impassable barrier severing the historic city from its inner suburbs. Last year, Paris deputies proposed downsizing the Périphérique, removing vehicle lanes and dropping speed limits to transform the road from a smog-spewing limited-access highway into a tree-lined “metropolitan avenue.”

Now, as Mayor Anne Hidalgo seeks reelection, she has adopted and doubled down on that plan and is giving it some extra post-pandemic flourishes. Preparing for the delayed second round of Paris’ municipal elections on June 28 — in which she is the front-runner — Hidalgo released a “Manifesto for Paris” on Tuesday, detailing a vision for the city co-written with her newly-allied running partner, David Belliard of the Green Party. Promising to place ecology “at the heart” of city policy, the manifesto proposes several policies to boost environmental and social sustainability, including a 30 kilometer-per-hour (18.6 mph) speed limit for all of Paris Proper and means-tested benefits to help families pay for childcare. Parking spaces would be cut in half, and the city’s new temporary cycle lanes and pedestrian streets — introduced to help manage the coronavirus crisis — would be made permanent. In keeping with Hidalgo’s well-known pursuit of progressive car-mitigation polities, she’s now proposing to slash speed limits on the Périphérique to a mere 50 k/ph (31 mph) — extremely low for a fully segregated highway — and setting a lane aside for public transit, zero-emission vehicles, and car-poolers.

Further into the future, Hidalgo’s current deputy, Jean-Louis Missika, also announced that 100,000 newly planted trees will flank the beltway, and pedestrian crossings and traffic lights will ultimately be introduced in sections of the road that aren’t tunneled or elevated. A road that has long functioned as a rampart separating Paris from its suburbs will thus be transformed into something calmer, slower, greener, narrower, and altogether less hostile to people without cars.