It was a campaign promise by Anne Hidalgo: the mayor of Paris wants to lower the speed limit on the Paris ring road from 70 km/h to 50 km/h. The millions of motorists who use the Paris ring road every day will therefore be forced to slow down by this autumn, after the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Quite a change for users of the périph', who have already had to adapt to the lane reserved for athletes during the competition, then to carpooling and buses.
According to traffic specialists, a 50 km/h ring road would not only reduce pollution and noise pollution, but would also make traffic flow more smoothly. According to its calculations, Bruitparif estimates that a reduction in traffic speed could reduce noise by 2 to 3 decibels. As part of its Climate Plan, the City of Paris intends to change traffic on this major Parisian thoroughfare, which reaches a median speed of 30-45km/h at rush hour.
As a reminder, the maximum speed limit on the ring road used to be 90km/h before 1993, and was reduced to 70km/h in 2014. Dan Lert, the mayor's deputy in charge of ecological transition, told a conference that this could prevent 1,500 premature deaths on the outskirts of the capital, with less road-traffic-related nitrogen dioxide in the air.
While Anne Hidalgo still wants to change the speed limit on the ring road by October 2024, as she supports in an interview with Ouest-France, the government, the Prefect of Police and a large proportion of motorists who come to work on the outskirts of the capital are still opposed to such a limit.
