Paris is hosting the next international conference on climate change COP21 in December 2015 and Mayor Anne Hidalgo is making some efforts to show leadership and transform Paris into a more sustainable & liveable city. One of those efforts is the very first Car-Free Day in Paris: “Paris sans voiture”.

Thousands of people experienced the famous Champs-Elysées without cars yesterday and many more people were walking and cycling in other parts of the town on this sunny Sunday. As usual, car-free days are a very mixed social happening: people of all ages (especially children), origins, levels of sportiness,… cycle and walk along each other in a relaxed way. Most of them are especially motivated to explore otherwise off-limit spaces such as big boulevards and tunnels and this curiosity leads them to try out new and active modes of transport. My Parisian guide, who only ever cycled once in her city and mostly makes use of the underground public transport, was surprised by the distances we easily covered by Velib’

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On the international scale, Paris definitely sets an example for many other cities with this first edition of the Car Free Day and, it doesn’t stop here. For the local citizens, the car free day was only a symbolic action, as Sundays are usually already quite calm in Paris, with fewer traffic and weekly car-free zones (“Paris Respire” streets that are blocked from motorized traffic on Sunday such as the tunnels along the river Seine). On the local plan, the weekly car free zones have been in place for many years already and their benefits are undoubtedly more important than a one-off car free day. It allows citizens indeed to take a regular breath, as the name of the initiative in French suggests, from polluting and dangerous traffic. To take cycling really to a next level in Paris, there is still a lot of improvement needed in cycling infrastructure. There are some protected cycling lanes, but not enough, especially on some big avenues safe infrastructure is missing. Paris might want to consider the successful Brussels experiment of contra-flow cycling (only spotted in one street during my cycling tour).  

Mayor Hidalgo also calls clean air an “absolute priority” and has set up a plan to ban the most polluting vehicles from the city. Citizens and professionals who want to dispose of their car (older than 2001) can benefit from different incentives: either a discount membership on the Parisian car-sharing scheme (+ 50€ of travel credit), a public transport pass and a bike-share subscription, or a 400€ contribution to buy a bicycle, with or without electric assistance. Mode shift from motorized transport towards active mobility, in line with the measures in ECF's study air quality & cycling that links air quality and cycling. Paris was not 100% car free on Sunday 27 September and there is room for improvement of cycling conditions, but the city is certainly setting an example with its first Car Free Day and some of its permanent measures to decrease private motorized transport. A positive sign for the upcoming COP21.