“Awareness, development, sanctions”, here are the three axes of the new street code, which should be adopted Thursday, July 6 in the Council of Paris, according to a document that 20 minutes has procured. Announced by Anne Hidalgo in January 2023, the text contains some innovative or radical proposals, such as the creation of a “bicycle passport” or the exclusion of large displacement motorized two-wheelers, but for many is limited to trying to enforce existing rules.
“Do not take your vehicle in case of drunkenness”, “Do not honk your horn except in the event of immediate danger”, “Park your vehicle only in authorized places”… The street code has enacted 12 “essential rules”, which much resemble the… Highway Code, and the existing rules. The text recognizes this: “The Parisian street code does not aim to create new rules but to restore their meaning. “The street code is a prioritization of the rules that allow us to live together”, summarizes the security assistant Nicolas Nordman.
A “bike passport” and actions in 340 schools
Hence the “general mobilization” called for by the text, which is based on a rise in power of the Parisian municipal police (which has passed the milestone of 1,000 agents, as we are revealing to you). “The action of the municipal police will be reinforced by checks on all users” states the text. The video verbalization capacities will be doubled, as the executive has already announced, and new, the city agents will be equipped with binoculars radars and sound level meters to “fight against excessive speed and road noise”.
“We didn’t have radar binoculars, we have experimented with a few in recent months, and we are going to acquire new ones, at least one for each of the 17 divisions, to enforce the 30 km/h limit. Regarding the sound level meters, they make it possible to check the conformity of the two-wheeler with what is indicated as the maximum noise authorized on the gray card, but there are often unbridled motorcycles, and this is where we can verbalize “, explains to 20 minutes Nicolas Nordmann. The town hall also promises actions at the start of the school year where offenses endangering children will be verbalized more systematically.
Children are also one of the targets of the street code, which promises to further protect vulnerable people: “A first objective is to give back their place to children and families with very young children or strollers in the ‘public space “. For this, it seemed imperative to the executive to better train young people who ride bicycles, by deploying the national program “Know how to ride a bicycle”, a ten-hour course intended for children aged 6 to 11 to teach them the basics of the Highway Code and mastery of the fundamentals of cycling. The city promises next year the participation of 340 schools out of the 355 in the city in this program, with eventually 100% of schools. The content of this program will be summarized and enriched in a “bike passport”.
Finally, the executive recalls its objective of developing 100 “streets for schools” by the end of the term, i.e. the pedestrianization of streets in front of schools in a sustainable manner or at school entry and exit times.
No more cycle paths passing on sidewalks
To make life easier for pedestrians, who are displayed as the “number 1 priority” of this text, the city “is committed to a zero tolerance objective with regard to the encroachment on the sidewalks” and will ask for an evolution legislation to the government to authorize municipalities to remove unregistered vehicles from the sidewalks. It will also carry out experiments to make crossings safer, such as “coloured ground paint, colored lighting at pedestrian crossings, traffic lights with time counters to inform of the time remaining for the pedestrian to cross”.
The city also wants to enforce a provision of the mobility orientation law according to which no parking space can be set up on the roadway five meters upstream of the pedestrian crossings. Finally, the new cycle paths will no longer be set up on the sidewalks (currently, they can sometimes cross them), as pedestrians find it difficult to get used to these arrangements, according to the city, which create a feeling of insecurity.
Devices to secure blind spots
Still with a view to improving safety, the city promises to tackle a major driver mortality factor: blind spots. All of the cleanliness department’s heavy goods vehicles will be equipped with safety devices by 2026, anticipating European regulations which impose presence detectors in blind spots for new vehicles only and within longer periods.
More radical, the city ultimately wants to move towards “the exclusion of large displacement motorized two-wheelers”, both for reasons of safety and noise level. According to the Noise Information Center, the noise pollution generated by motorized two-wheelers is the number one reason for complaints from mayors with regard to noise. “We don’t have the legal tools to ban large cylinders, however with noise and pollution control, when you have a large cylinder that makes a lot of noise, it can be fined by the municipal police”, explains Nicolas Nordmann. The city also intends to plead to go below the 105 decibels authorized by the legislation, a sound level higher than that of a jackhammer.
Will this text succeed in pacifying relations between pedestrians, cyclists, scooters and drivers of all kinds? Still, it happens years after requests in this direction. As early as 2007, the ecologist Denis Baupin and the president of the French Federation of Bicycle Users Christophe Raverdy pleaded for such a code with the Minister of Ecology at the time, Jean-Louis Borloo. “We have been asking for this since 2019” also explains Rudolph Granier, elected member of the Changer Paris (LR) group. The proposal had been put in 2021 on the menu of the working discussions of the Citizens’ Assembly set up by the City of Paris, which agreed to deliver a roadmap in this direction. It remains to be seen whether the result will live up to expectations.