Reserved lanes: this legacy of the Olympic Games that we could do without

The Ministry of Transport and the City Hall of Paris have launched a public consultation… so, as is customary, a forceful passage.

In accordance with the request from the Ministry of Transport and the commitments made, the mayor of Paris and the police prefect chaired an information meeting on the project to reinstate reserved lanes on the ring road. Officially justified by a phase of “consultation” and an experiment scheduled for March 3, this approach leaves little room for doubt: regardless of the outcome of the discussions, it is already clear that it will reinforce the expressed desire of the City of Paris to protect these lanes at the expense of car traffic.

Beneath the veneer of the legacy of the Olympic Games, it seems obvious that some of the reserved lanes, temporarily established for this event, were intended to revert as soon as the Olympic flame extinguished. The official discourse mentions consultations and assessments of air quality, noise, road safety, social acceptability,… But one might wonder if these indicators are primarily used to legitimize a decision that has already been made. Remember the ring road at 50 km/h!

Motorists, already faced with chronic traffic jams on the ring road, the A1, and the A13, risk seeing their daily lives further disrupted. Reducing the space allocated to vehicles on such strategic routes can only exacerbate congestion and travel times while causing traffic to divert to secondary roads. Will the initial assessments, expected in September, December, and next March, be enough to reverse the trend if the results are negative? One can hardly be certain.

In reality, this “experiment” resembles more a forceful passage, where the public consultation serves as a facade to mask a decision that is already well-embedded in the Parisian political agenda.

ALSO READ: We tested the Paris ring road at 50 km/h