Transportation
Paris Gets to Keep Its Car Ban
Mayor Anne Hidalgo shifted her defense of the pedestrianization plan, winning with an argument that a car ban protects the city’s heritage and tourism.
In Paris, the Seine Quays can stay closed to cars after all. That’s the verdict today from Paris’s Administrative Court, which has ruled that the city’s pedestrianization of the roads along its central river can remain in place.
The pedestrianization plan, a flagship policy of Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s green overhaul of France’s capital, has been in jeopardy for months after opponents, who included motorists’ groups and representatives of suburban districts surrounding the city, got a court to agree in February that the closure had been based on inaccurate evidence about pollution and traffic reduction.