convert your M-30 to cycle and walk

He Boulevard Periphérique It is a sort of Parisian M-30. The French city has, like Madrid, a ring road with a length of 35 kilometers. It was designed in 1958 to unclog traffic in the city center with a clear objective: it was faster to go around the city center at a sustained speed than to pass through the center of it.

Both projects have grown with parallel lives. The Parisian highway was not completed until well into the 1970s and Madrid began construction of its own in that same decade. But, over time, they have experienced the same problems. Quickly, the highway was absorbed by the city itselfcreating a kind of urban highway.

This has caused a series of issues. The first is pollution, both from vehicle emissions and the noise generated. But also social problems with architectural walls that make pedestrian or bicycle passage difficult and that break the internal cohesion of the city. Madrid has solved part of this problem with Madrid Ríoburying a part of it and, now, covering the Sales step.

In Paris they have encountered a similar situation. The Boulevard Périphéric was built on the remains of the old Thiers wall, a defensive fortification completed in 1844 that at the beginning of the 20th century was totally useless and made it difficult for those who lived outside the wall to enter the city. What they didn’t imagine is that They were about to create a new wall.

The city has been debating for years what to do with this bypass. Measures have already been taken to try to reduce traffic. The latest proposal involves converting it into a real boulevard, with its trees, its pedestrian crossings and its bike lanes.

A new mayor’s office, an old project

During Anne Hidalgo’s mayoralty, the city has taken various measures to reduce traffic in the city center, calm the passage of vehicles and penalize those who reach the heart of Paris by car. Thus, a project has been implemented to multiply the number of bike lanes, reduce the trips that pass through the interior of the city and punish those who arrive with an SUV to the Eiffel Tower itself.

Hidalgo has taken over from Emmanuel Grégoire, who has managed to maintain control of the city in the hands of the socialists. And now a new melon opens: What to do with the Parisian M-30?

Under Hidalgo’s mandate, the highway had already taken the first steps toward becoming a true boulevard. So, speed has been reduced to 50 km/h but the traffic jam is so serious that most drivers said they couldn’t notice the difference.

But the intention of the new Government is to go further. The new mayor has not hidden At no time does he want to go deeper into the path designed by Hidalgo, reducing the volume of vehicles circulating through the city. And, above all, converting the current ring road into an urban boulevard. That is: transform the road into a road limited to 30 km/h, create a bicycle lane that runs along the entire length and leave space for pedestrians.

It is a project for which Parisian environmental parties are also betting which, in addition, support the creation of traffic-signalized zebra crossings, instead of raising pedestrian crossings with bridges. This “changes everything because the road is a circular highway, and from the moment it is broken (the traffic lights are installed), it is no longer the same model,” their representatives point out.

Reconverting the image of Boulevard Périphéric is an old ambition of the environmentalist and socialist parties since they have been talking for more than a decade about the chaotic traffic that is experienced every day in Paris but also about the social gap that exists between those who live inside and outside it. Already in 2015, Guardian dedicated an article to the problems generated by this urban highway.

The intention of the new Government team is to have the project completed before the end of its mandate. That is to say, in the first years of the next decade, Paris has changed the morphology of this space completely. However, since The Figaro They warn that bureaucracy can play against them and that everything would get stuck if the police force issues an unfavorable opinion on the measure.

Photo | Romain DC on Wikimedia and Johan Mouchet

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