The historic heart of Paris could be closed to all except residents' cars in seven years, the town hall has said, taking mayor Bertrand Delanoe's campaign against the internal combustion engine to its logical conclusion.
Under the three-stage plan, the French capital's first four arrondissements, a large central zone on the right bank of the Seine, would be closed except for permit-holding local traffic, essential journeys and commercial and public service vehicles such as taxis, delivery vans and ambulances.
The project, which goes well beyond London's congestion charge, should cut traffic volumes in the centre by up to 75 per cent, according to Denis Baupin, the Green deputy mayor in charge of transport issues.
Baupin said the first phase, due to last two years, will be presented to the socialist and green-dominated council soon and could be under way within months. It will see the speed limit in the central zone cut to 30km/h and major traffic arteries narrowed.
In phase two, roads surrounding the Les Halles shopping mall would be pedestrianised and cars banned from the zone on Sundays. Phase three would see the whole area, bordered by the river, the Place de la Concorde, the Opera, Republique and the Bastille, closed to non-residential traffic.
Also restricted to cyclists, rollerbladers and pedestrians would be Paris's north bank expressway. The Voie Georges Pompidou, named after a president who decreed that Paris "had to adapt to the automobile", carries some 70,000 vehicles a day.
Perhaps predictably, the project won far from unanimous applause on the streets of Paris. Xavier Turiere, 34, boss of a bar-tabac on the rue Montmartre in the second arrondissement, dismissed the idea as "bloody ridiculous, more Green lunacy", and Bernadette Pinson, a 64-year-old restaurateur, added: "It's madness, shameful. They want to kill all the shops and small businesses. Paris will become a dead city."
Baupin said the plan had been drawn up with the help of the same consultancy that worked on London's congestion charge. "But a toll system was just not the right solution for Paris," he said. "More people live in the centre of Paris. A toll would be segregationist, and unfair towards commuters from the suburbs." He said that more than half of all car journeys in central Paris were made by "people just passing through".