Paris: what could the implementation of a “street code” change?

Called for several years by certain Parisian elected officials, the drafting of a “Street Code” is now in the pipeline, while Mayor Anne Hidalgo seems to have appropriated the concept. But what could that change?

On January 10, the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo announced her desire to “solve the problem” of “road safety and the difficult coexistence between pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, taxis, delivery vehicles and buses. “, and this, by writing a “Code of the Parisian street”. The idea being, according to her, to “build solutions” hand in hand with the Parisians, in particular those who had participated in the Citizens’ Assembly. Those having “already started working on it”, she had assured.

Rules of good conduct

Setting a deadline “June 2023” for the development of this text, which can in no way be binding because the City is not competent with regard to road safety, but which can nevertheless set a certain number of rules of good conduct to be adopted by users of the public space. A document that will also have to be adapted according to the response of Parisians, consulted on April 2 about whether or not to maintain free-floating electric scooters in Paris.

Free-floating scooters pose particular road safety problems. I am personally in favor of banning them but I will respect the opinion of the Parisians who will vote on April 2. We are also going to work on a street code.#Les4V pic.twitter.com/YHxejz3FYQ

— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) January 26, 2023

Asked about this on Thursday, Anne Hidalgo recalled the difficulties encountered in the deployment of this new mode of so-called “soft” mobility, which she once favored. “We can’t contain them. [les trottinettes électriques, ndlr] in public space […] This poses road safety problems, I am thinking of our elders, people with disabilities,” she explained, while conceding that on a personal level, she did not wish to renew the contract which links the town hall of Paris to the 3 operators of authorized free-floating electric scooters. That is, Dott, Lime and Tier.

Among Parisian elected officials, the question of free-floating divides. If some are for and others against, the idea of ​​better regulating the flows between pedestrians, cyclists and drivers of personal transport vehicles such as electric scooters is rather consensus. “The framework, the regulation, the verbalization have never been put in place in this area”, deplores Maud Gatel, the president of the group of elected MoDem, Democrats and Ecologists at the Council of Paris, who evokes the “anarchy” which now exists in the Parisian public space, “insecure for pedestrians and the most fragile”.

For the elected member of the 11th district of Paris, the request to have “a pedestrian strategy” is old in the capital. “The place of the most fragile in the public space is really a central subject, on which we have tried to draw attention since the previous term of office”, recalls the one who regrets that the pedestrian is sometimes “forgotten”. For us, a “Street Code” must make it possible to “facilitate pedestrian paths in connection with terraces, works…”. And to strike: “we must sanctuary the sidewalks”.

In the Paris Council, Nicolas Jeanneté, elected opposition member, recently recalled that the executive’s last pedestrian strategy dated back to 2017. is to facilitate pedestrian difficulties, it is to better take pedestrians into account in new developments, it is to reduce conflicts of use in public space”, he listed, insisting on the fact that walking is “the first form of mobility in Paris”.