It’s going to end out of time. The redevelopment of the perspective between the Eiffel Tower and the Trocadéro, which the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo wanted to carry out before the 2024 Olympic Games, is compromised at this deadline, admitted Tuesday his first deputy. “We now have a blockage in administrative litigation […]. For the implementation before the Olympics, it seems difficult, ”said Emmanuel Grégoire during a meeting with journalists before the city council dedicated to the 2023 budget.
Mid-October, the new prefect of police of Paris Laurent Nuñez had indicated before this assembly to maintain the unfavorable opinion of his predecessor Didier Lallement to the project of the town hall of redevelopment of the surroundings of the Eiffel Tower. The latter aims in particular to reduce the space occupied by the car on either side of the Pont d’Iéna, destined to become “the first green bridge in Paris”, with the redevelopment of the Place du Trocadéro, where traffic must be reorganized into a half-moon on the model of the Place de la Bastille.
“Restraints” which could hinder the intervention of the emergency services
In a letter dated May, Didier Lallement had put forward his fears linked to “significant traffic reports” and “detentions” which could hinder the intervention of the emergency services. Despite “excellent relations” with his successor, Laurent Nuñez, “we clearly have a dispute” with the government which “changed its mind” after having “said yes to all phases” of instruction, said Emmanuel Grégoire.
At the end of October, the administrative justice had rejected the request for interim relief from the City against the decision of the former prefect to oppose the work. The City appealed to the Court of Cassation “with little hope of changing this first decision”, acknowledged Emmanuel Grégoire, for whom this blockage around a new project to reduce car traffic recalls the standoff finally won in 2018 by Anne Hidalgo for the pedestrianization of the tracks on the banks of the right bank of the Seine. “It took two and a half years to get out of the procedure,” recalled the first deputy.