The 2024 Olympics are a boon for Anne Hidalgo in her strategy to limit the place of the car in Paris. Half of the surface area of Place de la Concorde “will not be returned to motorists after the Olympic Games,” announced the mayor in an interview with La Tribune Sunday.
Six and a half months before the Summer Olympics (July 26 – August 11), Mayor PS indicates that the largest square in the capital “will be available for walking from the Tuileries to the obelisk”, at from the Games. “Traffic is more fluid by closing half of the square,” she believes, adding that the “place given to the car in this emblematic place will have been only a parenthesis in History”.
“60 kilometers of additional cycle paths”
“The Place de la Concorde, the Trocadéro and Iéna (…), with the Champ de Mars, constitute 50 hectares of pedestrian and planted spaces for walking”, indicates Anne Hidalgo, and “60 kilometers of additional cycle paths” will be put in place. in place “compared to what we would have done without the Games”.
Place de la Concorde will host the so-called urban sports events (BMX freestyle, breakdance, skateboarding and three-person basketball) of the Paris Olympics, as well as the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games (August 28 – September 8).
The Olympics will be “an unforgettable celebration”
This place with degraded furniture and pavement – a recurring criticism addressed to the town hall – had already hosted a fan zone of up to 10,000 people around its famous obelisk during the Rugby World Cup. The square’s fountains are also the subject of renovation work which is due to be completed in August.
On infrastructure, the network of cycle paths, the reception of events on the Olympic sites, or even that of tourists, “I have never stopped saying it: we are ready”, underlines Anne Hidalgo, repeating that it there are “other subjects, such as public transport, on which there is still work”. For Parisians, “of course there will be constraints with the installation of the Olympic sites, for some of them from March-April,” adds the city councilor. But “the Games in Paris will be an unforgettable celebration,” she predicts.