France's former Minister of Health Agnes Buzyn. (Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)
Whether or not to build protected cycleways has become a flashpoint in the contest to become the next Mayor of Paris. Anne Hidalgo, the current mayor, has promised to make every street in Paris “cycling friendly,” but this is opposed by other candidates, including Agnès Buzyn, who was recently parachuted into the mayoral election by the country’s governing party.
Speaking on national TV on March 4, Buzyn said: “Cycling in Paris is not good for your health.” Cycling was unhealthy, she stressed, because of breathing in polluted air, but didn’t make the logical step of planning to reduce such pollution by restricting car parking and other methods of reducing motor vehicle usage.
Buzyn resigned as France’s Minister of Health on February 20 in order to fight the mayoral election on behalf of Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche party. Macron’s previous candidate resigned because of a “sexting” scandal.
On January 29, Hidalgo revealed that the space required to make Paris cyclist-friendly would mostly come at the expense of motoring. Under her plans Paris would remove 72% of its on-street car parking spaces.
During last night’s televised mayor debate—billed as La Grande Confrontation Paris—Buzyn claimed that Hidalgo’s plans to make the French capital more cycle friendly were “not pragmatic, they are violent.”
Buzyn is a former university professor and medical practitioner who had served as the Minister of Solidarity and Health in the French government since May 2017.
Cycle advocacy group Paris En Selle tweeted that Buzyn’s claim about cycling not being healthy was “not true.”
In an interview with a French Sunday newspaper published on February 23, Buzyn said she wanted to encourage cycling but that cutting car parking spaces was “punitive ecology,” and that making streets more cycle friendly “excludes a large number of Parisians.”
Buzyn’s claim that cycling in Paris was bad for health because of pollution was made during the first municipal TV debate, broadcast on LCI last night.
(Several studies have shown that motorists inhale more pollution than either cyclists or pedestrians.)
During her current term of office Hidalgo has aimed to transform Paris into a people-friendly city. Her “Plan Vélo” transport changes have included removing space for cars and boosting space for cyclists and pedestrians.
“If you liked Season 1 [of Plan Vélo] , you will love Season 2,” she insisted in February.
According to a 2019 study by Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme there are 83,500 on-street parking spaces in Paris—Hidalgo plans to remove 60,000 of them. (There are 621,600 parking spaces in total in Paris, most of them are domestic ones or commercial car parks.)
Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP) (Photo credit should read ... [+]
During any second term, Hidalgo, mayor of Paris since 2014, wants to carry out what she calls an “ecological transformation of the city,” aiming to clean the city’s air and improve the “daily life of Parisians.”
One of the flagship policies in her current term was the creation of a two-mile cycleway and scenic footpath on the right bank of the River Seine, which has been completely free of motor traffic since 2016.
During last night’s TV debate the other mayoral candidates were asked whether they would re-open the former Georges-Pompidou expressway to motor traffic. None confirmed that they would, possibly demonstrating that Hidalgo’s “anti-motoring” policies have been popular with many Parisians.
Article amended on March 5 to clarify Agnès Buzyn’s position on cycling being unhealthy because of air pollution. Also added link to studies that show motorists breath in more air pollution than cyclists or pedestrians.
