Transportation: Is Anne Hidalgo Trying to Ruin the 2024 Olympics?
This page is translated from the original post "Transports : Anne Hidalgo veut-elle faire capoter les JO 2024 ?" in French.
- 09/12/2023 16:05
The tone is rising between the government and the City of Paris, which is suspected of trying to sabotage the 2024 Olympic Games.
The logo of the 2024 Olympic Games is nonetheless explicit: Paris 2024 is written prominently on it. It is therefore not about Emmanuel Macron’s Olympic Games or others, but about the French capital. Sometimes, the energy invested by certain politicians from the opposition flank, and never mind if they govern France’s top city, to tarnish the event’s image, is concerning.
Not a week goes by without a new Parisian controversy regarding transportation or safety. The Île-de-France residents are tired of construction work, delays, soaring subscriptions, and political squabbles that ruin their daily lives.
The 2024 Olympic Games could have conveyed notions of teamwork, solidarity, and cohesion so that all political sides work together and set an example. So far, however, we are witnessing large solo performances. Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, was the first to open her umbrella, announcing that transportation would not be ready, with service and staff dysfunctions. “There are places where transport will not be ready because there will not be enough trains and the right frequency.” Nevertheless, fare increases for public transportation have been approved, seemingly to reinforce the sense of frustration: more expensive and less efficient. Quite a strange promotion for the event.
Strategy of Not Taking Responsibility?
On the surface, the provocations are the same: reduction of lanes on the ring road, the announcement – later retracted by the State – of slowing down from 70 to 50 km/h on that same Paris belt, tripling parking fees for SUVs, closure of Bercy bus station, increase in local taxes, exploding debt, bike lanes delineated by ugly, dangerous concrete blocks, halted construction sites across the capital, and massive traffic jams…
The discontent reaches the very top of the State. “If we have to deliver the Games without her, we will,” commented Madame Oudéa-Castéra, the Minister of Sports, on RTL. “The sequence that just happened is quite disappointing. We saw the Mayor of Paris politicize the Games for her own gain.”
Clément Beaune, the Minister of Transport, also expressed his annoyance at the repeated statements from the Mayor of Paris: “She insults our country by saying “we are useless, unprepared, we won’t make it”.” To which Anne Hidalgo responded that “such comments are unworthy of a Minister of the Republic, they are the words used by the far right.”
The organization of the Olympic Games is turning into a schoolyard, but we know who will bear the consequences: Île-de-France residents required to travel for work or to buy essentials.
READ ALSO: Anne Hidalgo wants to triple parking fees in Paris for SUVs
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