Traffic jam

The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë-- I call him the merde-Paris-- is one of my least favorite people. Because I have to use my car in and out of the city, for some very good reasons, I am persona non grata to him. He hates cars. He does not have a driver's license, and would like to make Paris into an immense pedestrian zone. Forget about Paris, you foreigners driving through France, you provincials and suburbans with no train where you live, you workers with early or late hours, you people with luggage or heavy things to move. Not to mention you delivery men, carpenters, plumbers, old people and handicapped people and sick people and people with children. (The mayor is a confirmed bachelor.)

In Paris, passengers are not allowed to bring large objects onto the bus; there are no elevators or even escalators in the metro stations; most buses stop running at about 9 p.m., the metro soon after midnight;and the lack of taxis is a scandal. (When they tried to increase the number of taxis in Paris, guess what the taxi drivers did? And guess what the government did?) Several taxi drivers have told me that they prefer to wait several hours at the airport rather than return to Paris where "driving is hell now." Nice! (Next time I go there, I'll take a photo of the hundreds and hundreds of taxis waiting in line there while Parisians search in vain for one.) Not to mention the constant strikes in the transport system. And are there enough trains and buses for the people who use them now? Mais non!

In the mayor's world, Parisians are all 25 years old with nothing to carry. He thinks we should all just ride our bikes!  But the many bike lanes he has created all over town are empty, because they are in the street, narrowing the space for cars, but don't protect bikers at the dangerous intersections.

Also because it rains all the time in Paris.

Maybe he thinks we should all just walk everywhere. But judging from the vast, empty sidewalks of the desolation he is creating, people aren't quite as interested in that as he thinks.

Last night I had to pick up two people and seven bags, one at the airport, one at the Gare du Nord. It took me an hour and a half to go the fifteen or so blocks from the Périphérique to the Gare du Nord, which in the past never took more than ten minutes. Ninety minutes of nonstop honking, ten fender-benders that I witnessed personally, clouds of auto exhaust spiraling up from stop-and-go traffic (four inches forward at every traffic-light change). It was impossible for pedestrians to cross the street: there was literally not enough room between car bumpers. An ambulance could not have made its way through. Last night, a Saturday night before Christmas, all through the congested city snarled into horrendous cacophonous knots of cars by the mayor's great projects, I did not see a single traffic cop. Merci, Mr Delanoë!

What the mayor has done is take some of the main six-lane and four-lane roads into Paris (in the first case, the main road into central Paris from Charles de Gaulle airport) and turn them into two-lane roads, one lane in each direction, while madly expanding the sidewalks to the size of the Champs-Elysées. He is constantly blocking off new streets and turning through -streets into dead ends so that people have to drive four or five times longer in a circuitous route to get where they are going. He also has made stop lights longer. He thinks people take their cars because they're rich and lazy, not because they need them. He believes that more people should be using the sardine-can-like metros and buses and trains. He believes that Place de la Concorde should be closed to traffic....

Did I mention that he is an UNELECTED official?

Here is a photo of the avenue Jean-Jaurès, another main road I had to take last week to leave town after visiting L at the hospital. It took an hour to do a trip that used to take a few minutes. Note that it is not rush hour yet, but only 3:30 in the afternoon. There are three people on the vast sidewalk, but they don't have enough room for the mayor! It is being expanded! To add insult to injury, there are lots of signs showing how this is beneficial to us.

Comments

[L'Amerloque]

Hi !

This is a genuine "cri de coeur" right and Amerloque sincerely congratulates you. The Maitre d'Hotel is in his own way destroying Paris. He and his greeny ayatollahs, in the name of "ecology" and "progressive thinking", are ruining Paris for all of us. No longer do we do our major shopping in central Paris: as you say, it's impossible to park the car and load up with packages. We frequently go to a centre commercial outside of town, now.

When one knows that this Mayor had planned for two billion euros (!) in bond issues over the next few years, one can worry even more. Paris was debt-free, not so long ago. Bonjour les impots !

Furthermore, when one reads (as one could in the weekend's papers) that the Hauts-de-Seine (92) and Yvelines (78) départements are refusing to enter joint public housing projects with Paris because Delanoe "va s'accaparer tous les fonds" (or words to that effect), one can worry even more ... rebonjour les impots !

Best,
L'Amerloque

[Parisien]

If I fully agree with you about Delanoë policy... we must admit that he is an elected official.

Delanoë was the leader of a Left coalition (Socialists, Communists, Greens and diverse left) which has won the last municipal election, held in march 2001, against center-right coalition.

Municipal elections stands in France every six years (1977, 83, 89, 95, 2001 and... 2008, an exception due to the huge 2007 electoral agenda) and the Mayor of Paris is elected since 1977.