The Parisians vote on Sunday in a referendum to decide whether another 500 streets in the city should be pedestrian and environmentally friendly, in a new initiative of the French capital to reduce the use of cars and improve air quality. This is the third referendum of this type organized in Paris in so many years, after the vote of 2023, which approved the prohibition of electronic scooters, and after last year's decision to triple parking fees for large SUVs, writes Reuters. «In the last 25 years we have gradually recovered the public space for pedestrian traffic, for light traffic and 'garden streets', to create lungs inside the neighborhoods, the places we live in,» said Deputy Mayor Patrick Bloche for Reuters before Sunday's vote. The data of Paris City Hall shows that car traffic in the city has reduced more than half since the Socialists took power at the beginning of the century. Mayor Anne-Hidalgo, according to 2014, supervised the significant transformation of the streets in the city. From 2020, 84 km of bicycle tracks were created, and the use of bicycles increased by 71% between the end of Covid-19 restrictions, the data shows. If approved, the Sunday referendum will eliminate 10,000 additional parking spaces in Paris, which will be added to the 10,000 eliminated from 2020. The two million inhabitants of the Capital will be consulted on the streets that will become pedestrian areas.
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