To a tamer motorist, the haze of exhaust fumes rising amid a chorus of klaxons on the junction of Rue de Varenne and Rue Bourgogne would denote impossible gridlock. But plumber Manu Mota always finds a way.
"There are plenty of places to park. It's just that they are not legal," announces the 57-year-old plumber while he eases his battered white van across the street corner, before parking the front wheels on one pedestrian crossing and the rear wheels on another.
Portuguese-born Mota, who has been defying Parisian road realities since 1971, climbs out of his van and goes into a plumbing supplies shop.
Everyone agrees that driving in Paris has never been as bad as in the past two weeks when roadworks marked by yellow deviation signs seem to have sprung up everywhere.
socialists and greens
"The Socialists and Greens in the city hall are deliberately making our life hell. I would be happy to pay an annual charge to drive in Paris. It would be tax-deductible for us anyway," he says to nods of approval from his colleagues in the shop. "But the mayor and his friends say charges are elitist."
The radio is playing music but it won't be long until the next talk show in which motorists -- and pedestrians and bus passengers -- call in with hellish stories of four-hour journeys from the suburbs, and praise for London's congestion charge, Strasbourg's free bicycles and the Dutch idea of motorway express lanes for buses.
Since being elected in 2001, socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe has embarked on a campaign to cut pollution, build a tramline, broaden pavements and oblige motorists to respect bus and cycle lanes.
But while the number of cars in central Paris has fallen by 5 percent since 2002, their speed has declined by only 1 percent and rush hour has increased by 60 minutes.
fewer passengers
City authorities claim Metro and RER commuter rail service use has increased by 15 percent in the past year.
However, the figure is contested by the opposition which says Metro use is down by 2.8 percent and the RER had 2.3 percent fewer passengers in 2003 than in the previous year.
Mota only takes notice of his own statistics -- his parking fines: 20 in the first 15 days of this year, at a rate of 35 euros each.
It will probably get worse for him this year: following the introduction of speeding radars on the peripherique ringroad two years ago, CCTV cameras will be installed next month on the Champs-Elysees.
scrapped parking
This year, 6,000 parking spaces will be scrapped in central Paris.
Heading over the Henri IV bridge towards his next call in the Marais district, Mota points out that even cyclists get fined for using bus lanes.
"Ridiculous," he says. "Especially since police cars use the lanes with abandon, even when they are not on an emergency call. And have you ever seen a French police car stop at a red traffic light?"
Nevertheless, he concedes: "Something has to be done about the private cars in Paris. They all have just one person in them, the driver. The French are so individualistic that they do not even want to share the air they fart into with other people."
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion