Last month, Parisians voted in a referendum to turn an additional 500 streets over to pedestrians. A year earlier, Paris had moved to sharply increase parking fees for SUVs, forcing drivers to pay three times more than they would for smaller cars. The city has also turned a bank of the Seine from a busy artery into a pedestrian zone and banned most car traffic from the shopping boulevard of Rue de Rivoli.
Part of the payoff has been invisible — in the air itself.
Airparif, an independent group that tracks air quality for France’s capital region, said this week that levels of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) have decreased 55% since 2005, while nitrogen dioxide levels have fallen 50%. It attributed this to “regulations and public policies,” including steps to limit traffic and ban the most polluting vehicles.