The speed on the Paris ring road will soon be lowered to 50 km/h. BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
This measure was unveiled by the City of Paris this Wednesday, during the presentation of the capital’s Climate Plan. This intends to “put a brake on automobile traffic”.
Parisian drivers will once again have to put their foot on the brake pedal. After a first reduction in the speed on the Paris ring road to 70 km/h (instead of 80 km/h) in 2014, the City of Paris announced this Wednesday, November 22 that it now intended to limit the speed to 50 km/h. km/h, on the 35 kilometers of roads that surround the capital.
This measure will come into force on September 14, 2024, as soon as the Olympic Games end. It is accompanied by a second change for the ring road: the reservation of a lane entirely dedicated to carpooling and public transport. This path will be the one which, during the summer of 2024, will serve as “Olympic way», a lane separated from the rest of the boulevard and reserved for the circulation of athletes and officials for the Olympic Games.
Read alsoTraffic in Paris: discover the most saturated sectors of the ring road
These two measures appear in the new 2024-2030 Climate Plan presented this Wednesday by the town hall, and which will be examined by the Paris Council in December before being submitted to a vote by elected officials during the year 2024. The second axis of this plan aims to “drastically reduce pollution linked to car traffic», in particular by lowering the maximum speed authorized on the ring road. Of course, traffic is already slow during rush hours, but the town hall specifies in a press release that “today the median speed on the ring road is 50 km/h during the day, from 30 to 45 km/h during rush hours and 60 km/h at night.» The measure will therefore force motorists to brake at night, even when the lanes are not very congested.
The town hall also announces in its Climate Plan the creation of a “pedestrian heart» in each of the twenty districts of the capital, as well as the installation of a “large-scale peaceful zone, also called Limited Traffic Zone (ZTL) in the center of Paris“. Tourist coaches will soon be banned from driving in the center of Paris and in this Limited Traffic Zone, “traffic will be reserved for pedestrians, bicycles, public transport and certain categories of users (residents, traders, craftsmen, people with reduced mobility, etc.)“.