PARIS — Videos of mayor Anne Hidalgo swimming in the Seine River have become the defining image of the preparations for the Paris Olympic Games. Over the past eight years, €1.4 billion have been invested to clean the river in time for it to be swimmable for the triathlon, paratriathlon and swim-marathon events it will host.
The decision to clean the Seine is only one of many initiatives implemented by the Hidalgo administration since 2014, when she was first elected, part of a broader push to make Paris an example for cities across the globe when it comes to the fight against climate change. It is thanks to some of these initiatives that the Parisian skies are cleaner and the city’s air is not as contaminated as it was just 10 years ago: concentrations of fine particles and nitrogen dioxide have been reduced by an average of 40% between 2013 and 2023 in and around Paris.
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While a clean and swimmable Seine will be the “first legacy” of the Olympic Games according to the mayor, most of the initiatives to make Paris more livable happen on dry land. In an interview given to French financial daily La Tribune, Hidalgo says that, thanks to Paris 2024, the city will also manage to expand its bike lanes network by 60 kilometers (37 miles), on top of having 50 more hectares (124 acres) of the city center that will be “reclaimed from cars,” with new pedestrian areas and green spaces.
Among the areas that will become pedestrian-only is the historical Concorde square, with Hidalgo declaring that “the space given to the car in this emblematic place will have been no more than a parenthesis in history.” And similar plans might soon be expanded to the rest of Paris. Bike lanes will cover most of the city surface by 2026, part of a plan to make Paris a city “100% bikeable” within the next two years, as written on the City Hall website. This effort also includes widening sidewalks and narrowing streets, making pedestrian zones out of schools and reducing parking spots while also making it more expensive for cars to park in the city center.
Breathing better
The motivation behind what some consider radical changes is both slashing long-term emissions and the more immediate health impacts of pollution. Road transportation in Paris accounted for 47% of Nitrogen Oxide emissions in 2021, mainly released in the form of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), a gas that bears a major impact on human health, ranging from asthma and respiratory infections to hospitalization.
Transportation was also the third-largest source of CO2 emissions in 2022 in the French capital. Similar numbers are of course registered elsewhere: In the European Union, 25% of total CO2 emissions came from road transportation in 2019. Most of this pollution was accounted for by cars (about 60%).
But while others talk of reducing emissions from cars, Hidalgo's long-term vision is to reduce the number of cars. Research shows that car-free policies reduce air and noise pollution, and likely lead to a larger availability of urban green areas, higher levels of active mobility and physical activity, and even a reduction in premature mortality and morbidity. For this reason, more and more cities are implementing this policy to slash car emissions.
Sunday rides
To begin to experiment with how the city could operate without automobiles, the Paris municipal council passed in 2016 a car-free scheme that was enforced every first Sunday of the month around the Champs-Élysées.
Today, the initiative also includes the first four districts of the city (Paris Centre), and in some areas, like Montmartre and Saint-Martin, the initiative is implemented on all Sundays.
The first-ever car free day in Paris was held in October 2015. It affected 30% of the city, and led to a reduction of up to 40% in Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) concentration in the air. Today, more than eight years after the first car free day, restricting vehicle circulation still significantly improves the quality of the air Parisians breathe.
Visualizing the impact
By looking at Nitrogen Dioxide concentration in the air during the Paris Respire day in March, and by comparing it to other days in early March with no restrictions to car circulation, the improvement in air quality is clearly visible.
Airparif, the observatory monitoring air quality in the Parisian region, assessed the impact of a car-free day in a report published in September 2023. On the day of the initiative (Sept. 17), which exceptionally limited car circulation all over the city, NO2 concentration in the air from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. was between 5% and 20% lower than the one observed on any other Sunday in sections close to traffic routes. Pollution was also lower in areas not concerned by the initiative.
The report also confirms the positive impact of such policies on premature mortality due to Nitrogen Dioxide exposure, which went from 4520 in 2010 to 3680 in 2019 (-19%). According to the observatory, further policies aimed at reducing emissions could save up to 7900 lives a year in the Île-de-France region.
But more work still has to be done to improve air quality in Paris. The municipality admits that levels of NO2, PM2.5 and PM10 — toxic particles produced through human activities, such as farming and transportation, as well as natural sources and chemical reactions happening in the atmosphere — and O3 (Ozone) in Paris still consistently exceed World Health Organization recommendations, says the Paris City Hall.
However, concentration levels have been decreasing steadily over the years for all the pollutants mentioned above, with the exception of Ozone — whose increase is mainly due to a higher frequency of heatwaves, experts say.
More work to do
Another major consequence of car circulation is noise pollution. According to the Paris city hall, vehicle noise in Paris has only decreased on average by 2 Decibels between 2015 and 2020, mainly thanks to a 30km/h speed limit that has been reinforced across the city and a 2% reduction in yearly traffic. The latter is a direct consequence of the expansion of the bike lanes network in the French capital.
Once again, car-free policies can address this problem. Bruitparif, the noise observatory of the Île-de-France region, also assessed the impact of the Paris respire day on September 17, 2023. In a report, the observatory estimated an overall reduction to noise pollution of 3.3 Decibels, or a 53% reduction compared to a Sunday without car restrictions. For comparison, the noise level in a well-isolated Parisian apartment is 20 Decibels on average.
A car-free future?
Future car-free policies will have to focus on further curbing vehicle emissions, a goal that can only be achieved through more restrictions on automobile circulation. David Belliard, Paris Deputy Mayor, proposed last September to make the city car-free during the summer Olympic Games. While the proposal was not accepted — and the Paris Respire initiative will actually be partially suspended in August and September — it shows where the most visited city on earth is headed.
Many have started asking whether it would ever be possible for the city to get rid of cars altogether. Paris offers numerous alternatives to cars, including 14 metro lines, 13 tram lines and regional train lines, as well as an expanding bike lane network. Such an extensive public transportation system could realistically make Paris completely car-free in the future. Yet, infrastructures will have to shift away from a car-centric transportation system in favor of alternative vehicles, such as bikes.
Public transportation will also have to expand to the suburbs if Paris wants to reduce its car dependency. Almost 60% of workers in the capital don’t live in the city, and car dependency increases outside of the municipality. According to the French statistics institute, only 33.5% of households in Paris owned a car in 2019, a percentage that increased to 64.5% in the immediate surroundings and to 83.4% in the Île-de-France region.
Yes, Paris is still a long way from being car-free, and the Seine is hardly the cleanest river in the world. But the Olympics are also a good chance to dream about getting there.