Death of cyclist in Paris lays bare divide over mayor’s war against cars

PARIS – It sent a shock through Paris, a city striving to transform itself into one of the great cycling metropolises in the world: A bicycle rider, crushed under the wheels of a sport utility vehicle in a bike lane just a few metres from La Madeleine, the landmark neoclassical church, in what prosecutors suspect was a deliberate act of road rage.

A murder investigation has been opened, and last week, Mayor Anne Hidalgo led the Paris City Council in a minute of silence for the cyclist, Mr Paul Varry, 27, who was also a cycling advocate.

Ms Hidalgo, a member of the Socialist Party, delivered an emotional speech in which she signalled she would continue to roll out her famously aggressive policies that aim to drastically reduce the role of the car in Parisian life.

“I am truly angry,” she said. “The future does not belong to cars.”

An outpouring of emotion over Mr Varry’s Oct 15 death has put a spotlight on the dangers facing cyclists in a city that has seen an explosion in bikes and cycling lanes in recent years. But it has also underscored the frustrations that motorists increasingly feel in a place that has chosen to limit the movement, speed and parking options of cars.

In recent weeks, as cycling organisations, spurred by the death of Mr Varry, demanded more protections from aggressive drivers, others have complained about Parisian bikers themselves, some of whom have earned a reputation as dangerous risk-takers.

‘Putting a garrote around Paris’

Ratcheting up tensions in November is a new policy banning motorists from driving through the four arrondissements, or districts, in the heart of the city, rekindling the argument that Ms Hidalgo’s anti-car stance is impractical, bad for business and caters mostly to wealthy liberals who can afford to live in the city centre.

“She is putting a garrote around Paris,” Mr Patrick Aboukrat, a boutique owner in the fashionable Marais neighbourhood, said this week, placing his hands on his neck for effect.

The debate in the French capital reflects the challenges facing policymakers around the world as they ask constituents to alter ingrained life habits in the fight against climate change. Ms Hidalgo’s experiment – which has turned many Parisian streets into whooshing parades of pedalling commuters – is also unfolding in a city that has long harboured an innate tension between the big-city need for speed and the more languorous pleasures of “la belle vie”.

If the rest of France thinks of the stereotypical Parisian as eternally in a hurry, and perhaps a little rude along the way, it is also the place that gave rise to the 19th-century concept of the flaneur, the strolling, poetically minded observer of city life who required time to adequately savour it. German cultural critic Walter Benjamin even asserted, in what may be an urban myth, that some flaneurs slowed their roll by walking with a turtle on a leash.

Ms Hidalgo, in her fiery speech last week, effectively embraced the turtle. Going “very quickly from point A to point B”, she said, “is not living in a civilised way in a city. In a city, one stops, one takes one’s time. We respect others.”

Pedestrians complaining about #cyclopathes

But for some Parisians, especially pedestrians, it is cyclists streaking wantonly through intersections who have become the threat. A recent article in Le Monde described the rising trend of “bicycle bashing”, noting social media complaints about bikers bearing the hashtag #cyclopathe.

Ms Hidalgo, who took office in 2014, announced this week that she would not seek a third term. She has made reducing car traffic a signature effort.

Her government has already turned roads on the banks of the Seine into walking and bike paths, created hundreds of miles of new bike lanes elsewhere, and reserved most of the Rue de Rivoli, a key east-west thoroughfare, for cyclists.

The city has reduced the speed limit on Paris’ ring road and plans to remove 60,000 parking spaces by 2030.

It is currently enacting a soft roll-out of the new traffic restrictions in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th arrondissements, on the right bank of the Seine, an area that encompasses the Louvre Museum, the Tuileries gardens and neighbourhoods like the Marais. Buses and taxis are exempt from the prohibition, but regular drivers must have a specific destination inside the zone in mind.

In an interview last week, Mr Aboukrat, the head of a merchants’ association called Comite Marais Paris, said his group is planning to take legal action to stop the ban, which he predicts will harm his business.

“People will look on Waze and see that it is a forbidden zone, and they won’t come,” he said, referring to the navigation app.

Mr Yves Carra, a spokesman for the Mobilite Club France group, which until recently was known as L’Automobile Club Association, said he is frustrated that the Paris government, which represents about two million people within the boundaries of the city, is making decisions that affect some 12 million people who live in the metropolitan area.

The car, he said, is a valid technological response to Paris’ suburban sprawl. Ms Hidalgo’s policies, he said, are detrimental to “the people who need these cars to be able to move around and live”.

Mr Aboukrat agreed. “It’s stunning for a Socialist mayor to stop the banlieues from coming in, or to cut off their liberty to circulate,” he said, referring to working-class suburbs.

Ms Hidalgo, among other things, has argued that her policies have contributed to significant reductions in the amount of air pollution in the city.

Parisians’ love for bicycles has a long history, including what has been described as a sort of “fever” for its precursor, the velocipede, in the 19th century. During World War II, the bicycle became the principal means of transport on Parisian streets, according to Clement Dusong, a scholar of urbanism, but it fell out of favour after the war and the city began adapting to the car.

Mr Varry, the cyclist who was killed, hailed from a close-in suburb, Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, where he had made the cause of cyclists “the commitment of his life”, according to the city council there.

According to the authorities, Mr Varry was riding a bicycle in a cycling lane near La Madeleine on a Tuesday evening. The driver of the SUV, a 52-year-old man, began illegally driving in the lane as well, and at some point, ran over Mr Varry’s foot. Mr Varry banged his fist on the hood. Shortly thereafter, prosecutors say, the driver, whose teenage daughter was in the SUV with him, ran Mr Varry over.

The motorist, whose name was not disclosed by prosecutors, has been detained. A lawyer for the man described him as a father of four who worked as a sales representative. He said his client was trying to turn right and did not run Mr Varry over deliberately.

The incident sparked more than 200 protests across France, including one on Oct 19 that gathered roughly 1,000 people in Paris. It has also spurred cyclists to talk about road rage they have experienced from drivers; some have even likened it to the #MeToo movement.

“What Paul’s death showed is that there are a lot of cyclists who experience dangerous things on a daily basis, but it has received very little media coverage,” said Mr Antoine Breton-Godo, a cyclist in his 20s. “So it was a trigger.”

Call to protect all road users

A recent poll in Le Parisien newspaper suggested that the effort to limit cars is supported by roughly half of residents, with 27 per cent saying the Hidalgo government is doing a good job, and 23 per cent saying that more should be done.

Ms Hidalgo is supporting a protege and fellow Socialist, Mr Remi Feraud, in the 2026 mayoral election. Mr Feraud said he plans to continue Ms Hidalgo’s transportation policies.

In direct response to Mr Varry’s death, France’s Transport Minister Francois Durovray created a new “mission against violence to protect all users of the road”. In November, a pro-cycling group that Mr Varry belonged to, Paris en Selle, or Paris in the Saddle, announced it had drawn up a list of 200 intersections and 25 major roads that it says are in urgent need of changes to make them safer.

Ms Hidalgo said that she hoped that some place in Paris would be named in Mr Varry’s honour, adding him to the list of martyrs and heroes whose names already adorn the city streets. NYTIMES