In Paris, shops are closing and we know why

The anti-car and anti-tourist bus policies delight the City Hall of Paris, while the streets empty and businesses close.

Walk around Paris and a sense of dread will take hold of you. One in four storefronts is being liquidated, including shops that have been established for decades. In the capital, only a mind akin to an ostrich will insist that everything is fine.

It’s not hard to guess that the primary cause of this malaise is the exclusion of suburban residents, tourists, and also local residents. Moreover, the quarterly barometer of the City of Paris is revealing. It shows that the decline in attendance in the French capital is listed among the “positives,” while the opposite is true.

Parking in Free Fall

Thus, the City of Paris reports that the volume of traffic within Paris Intra Muros dropped by 18.7% in the third quarter of 2024 (the latest data available as of March 2025) compared to 2023. The périphérique lost 6.9% of traffic. The situation regarding parking is similar:

This graph shows that residents and subscribers are disappearing at a rate of 5.7% over one year, as some simply choose to leave the capital or abandon their vehicles due to the deliberately difficult traffic conditions created by the City Hall. It must be said that with parking fees rising up to 396 euros/day, the socialist municipality seems to have lost sight of the value of money and work.

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Another alarming piece of information: -30.2% in visitors to parking areas. This mainly concerns commuters who used to come to Paris for shopping, attending shows, dining at restaurants, or visiting clients. This category has been reduced by one third in 12 months. Over four years, Paris figures this decline at -34.5% in visitors and -10.8% in subscribers. Everything is fine.

Regarding tourism, it’s disastrous: a decline of 44.9% in one year. Likely influenced by the Olympic Games, with an apparent goal of encouraging tourists to use public transportation. But if we look over two years, the drop remains significant at -32.9% compared to data from the third quarter of 2021. Fewer tourists also means less commerce and revenue. QED.

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Bicycles Are Also Declining

Since everything is interconnected, a decline in tourism and the number of residents in the capital means fewer trips by Velib’, the self-service bike rental in Paris. With a -7.8% decrease over one year, the hit is also severe here. From 11.6 million trips in the third quarter of 2023, Paris dropped to 10.7 million in 2024… even during the Olympic year. Again, the exodus of Parisians might partly explain this, or so it seems.

In the end, Paris is emptying of its life, both neighborhood and tourist-based. And it takes little to turn this ship around. A simple stroll through the mostly depopulated streets will confirm it to you.

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