Paris residents to vote on making 500 more streets pedestrian
By Michaela Cabrera and Clotaire Achi
PARIS (Reuters) - Parisians vote in a referendum on Sunday to decide whether an extra 500 of the city's streets should be pedestrianised and greened, in a new push by the French capital's left-leaning town hall to curb car usage and improve air quality.
This is the third such referendum in Paris in as many years, following a 2023 vote that approved a ban on e-scooters, and a decision last year to triple parking charges for large SUVs.
"For the past 25 years we've gradually been reclaiming public space for pedestrian traffic, for gentle traffic, and with 'garden streets', to create lungs within neighbourhoods, the places where we live," Deputy Mayor Patrick Bloche told Reuters ahead of Sunday's vote.
Paris town hall data shows car traffic in the city has more than halved since the Socialists assumed power at the turn of the century.
Mayor Anne-Hidalgo, in office since 2014, has overseen significant transformation in the city's streets. Since 2020, 84 km (52 miles) of cycle lanes have been created and bicycle usage jumped 71% between the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns and 2023, the data shows.
If approved, Sunday's referendum will eliminate 10,000 extra parking spots in Paris, adding to the 10,000 removed since 2020. The capital's two million residents will be consulted on which streets will become pedestrian areas.
PARIS BOTTOM OF LIST OF EUROPE'S GREENEST CAPITALS
Despite recent changes, Paris lags other European capitals in terms of green infrastructure - which include private gardens, parks, tree-lined streets, water and wetlands - making up only 26% of the city area versus a European capitals average of 41%, according to the European Environment Agency.
Critics of the changes say the town hall's measures make it increasingly challenging for the 10 million people living in the outer suburbs, where the public transport network is less dense, to commute to work and shop in the city centre.
"It's important to know that the city of Paris isn't a museum. It's still a city where people work, where workers are forced to get around, where people from the greater Paris region are forced to come, where there are stores," said Philippe Noziere, head of the automobile owners' association 40M.
Car ownership illustrates the divide between central Paris and the suburbs: only one out of three households own a car in the former versus two out of three in the latter. Excluding Paris and its region, car ownership in France is 85%.
If Parisians vote in favour of the proposal, the 500 streets to be vegetated will bring the total of these "green lungs" to nearly 700, just over one-tenth of the capital's streets.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
an hour ago
Zelenskyy: 'Free, democratic world' is 'waiting' for Trump to bring peace in Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told ABC News' Martha Raddatz his country is ready for a ceasefire brokered by the United States, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of aiming for the "total defeat" of Ukraine. In the exclusive sit-down interview in Kyiv with Raddatz, co-anchor of ABC News' "This Week," Zelenskyy said Putin is uninterested in peace and that only "hard pressure" led by the U.S. and joined by European allies would render Putin to be "pragmatic" in his thinking. "Then they will stop the war," Zelenskyy said. "I am convinced that the president of the United States has all the powers and enough leverage to step up," Zelenskyy told Raddatz.
Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit the Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach, even if that leads to more inmates. For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600-million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.' Raza writes for the Associated Press.
Hamilton Spectator
3 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Israel vows to prevent an aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching Gaza
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel's defense minister has vowed to prevent an aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching the Gaza Strip. Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that Israel wouldn't allow anyone to break its naval blockade of the Palestinian territory , which he said was aimed at preventing Hamas from importing arms. Thunberg, a climate campaigner is among 12 activists aboard the Madleen, which is operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The vessel departed Sicily last Sunday on a mission that aims to break the sea blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, while raising awareness over the growing humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave. The activists had said they planned to reach Gaza's territorial waters as early as Sunday. Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament who is of Palestinian descent, is among the others onboard. She has been barred from entering Israel because of her opposition to Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. After a three-month total blockade aimed at pressuring Hamas, Israel started allowing some basic aid into Gaza last month, but humanitarian workers have warned of famine unless the blockade and the war end. An attempt last month by Freedom Flotilla to reach Gaza by sea failed after another of the group's vessels was attacked by two drones while sailing in international waters off Malta. The group blamed Israel for the attack , which damaged the front section of the ship. ___ Follow AP's war coverage at Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
