Translated by Angus B. GRIEVE-SMITH

The Socialist Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, who has led an energetic campaign to transform the city, appeared to be guaranteed a comfortable reelection, thanks to a divided right-wing opposition that has been reduced to accusing him of using the capital as a platform for his national ambitions.

Mr. Delanoë, 57, and his left-wing electoral list were estimated to receive 43% of votes in the first round on March 9 and 57% in the second round on March 16, according to a poll by CSA published at the end of February.

In order to gain the maximum number of seats in the 20 districts of Paris – each one also electing its own mayor – Mr. Delanoë will have to manage a complicated coalition strategy with the Green Party, his rebellious allies estimated to receive 5% of votes. He must also take into account the centrist Mouvement Démocrate party, which has made inroads with an estimated 9% of votes.

Facing a mayor who is sure of himself, who claims to be “neither anxious nor euphoric,” Françoise de Panafieu, 59, the candidate of the right-wing UMP party, which holds power in the national government, has largely conceded defeat.

Acknowledging a “difficult” campaign, she claims to be challenging “not the incumbent mayor,” but “the candidate for general secretary of the Socialist Party,” who will make the city “a weapon against the government.”

Mr. Delanoë, who has until now refuced to confirm it, is widely considered the likely challenger to Ségolène Royal to take the leadership of the Socialists and run for President of the country in 2012.

A landslide victory in the mayoral election will reinforce his stature. Former President Jacques Chirac, who ran the capital for almost 20 years, had used Paris as a stepping stone to national office.

The first left-wing mayor of Paris, elected in 2001, Mr. Delanoë has run an activist campaign.

In response to those who accused him of allowing Paris to become a city of “rich people” because of the housing crisis, he implemented measures to protect public spaces and promised to relieve the apartment shortage by removing the prohibition against high-rise buildings.

During his first term, he attracted attention by imposing a drastic reduction of lanes dedicated to car traffic in favor of mass transit and bicycle routes, and opened a streetcar line along the southern edge of the city.

Mr. Delanoë, one of the first politicians to acknowledge his homosexuality, was able to satisfy the aspirations of upper-class “bobos” (“bourgeois-bohèmes,” or yuppies). His detractors accused him of being authoritarian and autocratic.

He staked his repuation on media-friendly initiatives like “Paris Plage,” the summer-long transformation of the highways along the Seine into car-free recreation areas, and Velib’, the bicycle rental system popular with Parisians.

The right wing has had little success in attacking the Mayor on this urban policy shared by many large European cities. According to a recent poll, more than 60% of self-identified conservatives claimed to be satisfied with the results that Delanoë had achieved.

In an attempt to draw this conservative support away from Delanoë, the UMP is running celebrity candidates like Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and Justice Minister Rachida Dati. But these efforts could backfire thanks to resulting accusations of “carpetbagging” and creation of dissident electoral lists.

In fact, the UMP, which now holds only eight district mayoralties out of 20, could lose many of them in this city of two million where the mayoral election has always been more than a local contest.

Original: Paris promise au maire sortant Delanoë, étoile montante de la gauche, March 5, 2008. Image: © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons

Photo: phverant / Flickr

• The new “Discovery” version of the Navigo card, which guarantees the confidentiality of its user’s movements, will be available for an additional five euros.
• Privacy activists are protesting this surcharge.

Olivier LEVARD

Translated by Angus B. GRIEVE-SMITH

“Why pay more to take advantage of a fundamental right?” demands the organization Privacy International. A new version of the Navigo card that will allow public transit passengers in the Ile-de-France region to travel anonymously starting September first will cost its users five euros more, according to a source close to the agency. The reason given is that unlike with the classic Navigo card, the STIF (the public company charged with organizing public transports in the Ile-de-France) will not be required to pay the card’s distribution costs. Dubbed the “Passe découverte” or “Discovery card,” this contactless computerized card will not contain any of the traveler’s personal information, because the validation will not be connected to an identification number. (See sidebar.)

When contacted by LCI.fr, a representative of the privacy defense organization Privacy International was not ready to cheer. “It’s taken us six years to get this. This is not a victory. It’s a natural, normal step to take.” He was particularly stunned by the surcharge connected with the choice of pass. “Citizens are being forced to make a financial choice in order to exercise a fundamental right!”

Freedom to come and go

Even so, this all comes from good intentions. It is in response to a request from the CNIL (National Commission for Technology and Freedom) that the Navigo card respect “the freedom to come and go unhindered and anonymously” that the STIF announced that it will launch an anonymous card at the beginning of the school year, when the Navigo card is set to permanently replace the Carte Orange.

In fact, the CNIL has expressed its satisfaction at the announcement, although without much enthousiasm. “Although the Commission regrets that this anonymous Navigo card has been introduced so late and with an added charge, it can only applaud the implementation of its own recommendations.” Florence Fourets, government and public relations director for the Commission, confirmed to LCI.fr that she “did not see the logic in” this surcharge.

Big Brother Awards

Privacy International, which fights against the surveillance of transit users, regularly skewers the RATP and its Navigo card. This organization, founded in London in 1990 to “raise awareness about the erosion of private life and about new technologies for the surveillance of individuals,” in its 2001 Big Brother Awards bestowed a very ironic Orwell Trophy (an allusion to the author of 1984) on the authority. It was renominated in 2002 and 2004, with the mention that it was a “frequent offender with its Navigo card.”

Attracted by the contactless system, which allows passengers to move through the gates more than four times faster than with a magnetic ticket, the RATP gradually expanded the system to the point where two million passengers were using it, this past May. “Originally, this pass was designed to be completely traceable” the organization explained. “We had to fight to change it so that the RATP did not consider people’s personal information to be its permanent property. We believe that it belongs only to the individual, like a body part.”

“Totalitarian Society”

These privacy defenders have concrete fears. “We can easily imagine fun applications like, for example, comparing different groups of people traveling to different meeting points for manifestations and extracting the troublemakers.” The CNIL, which has allowed the RATP to keep travel records for 48 hours, explains that these limited archives are aimed at fighting fraud. “Knowing for example that one pass has been used at the same second at two separate stations,” says Florence Fourets.

Could the kind of sensitive information described above be collected in the name of “fighting fraud”? The RATP and the STIF have not responded to these questions at press time. “This is a short-sighted point of view,” says Privacy International, which demands that no information connected with Navigo card use be stored on servers for any reason. “A society without fraud is a totalitarian society.”

Practical information about the new “Discovery” card

The new card will be linked to a transport ID with a photograph of the user and his or her full name. The card and the transport ID are required to be presented together when requested by an inspection officer. In essence, the “Discovery” card will function like the old Carte Orange combined with its ticket, except that in this case the card will replace the ticket.

The new card will be sold in SNCF and RATP stations beginning on September 1. It will be available to all holders of monthly and weekly Carte Orange passes. Until now, for the current Navigo cards, the validation data (date, hour and place of use) are associated with the pass numbers for48 hours.

Original: Prendre le métro incognito coûtera plus cher, Olivier LEVARD, LCI.fr, August 9, 2007.

The Mobility Plan for Paris that will be debated [and adopted] by Parisian elected officials on February 12 and 13 hinges on the proposals to close (partially at least) the Georges Pompidou expressway, to install a lane reserved for buses, taxis and emergency vehicles on the Boulevard Périphérique [an eight-lane limited-access highway], and to limit automobile circulation in the center of Paris. However, there is no explicit mention of the implementation of “congestion pricing.”

London, Oslo, Stockholm and Singapore have all used this technique to limit access to their downtowns. Milan is expected to do the same in March 2007. In Paris the subject provokes, at this point, strong opposition. The suggestion of the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, on November 13, to “request input on” the implementation of congestion pricing in Paris has met with unanimous opposition, even from the UMP [his own center-right party].

Françoise de Panafieu, conservative candidate for the next mayoral elections in the capital, has concluded that “a toll at the gates of Paris would not be possible.” Jean-Paul Huchon, Socialist president of the Ile de France [the greater Paris region], has declared himself to be “firmly against” the idea, arguing that it amounts to “a national avoidance of responsibility,” and “an admission of impotence” in transit finance. Paris’s Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, has concluded that this plan would antagonize elected officials from nearby municipalities “from the right and the left.”

Eight days after the Prime Minister’s speech, the Regional Infrastructure District of the Ile de France (Dreif), in the context of its new management plan, published a study of traffic in the Ile de France, taking a position in support of a toll for entering Paris. For Francis Rol Tanguy, director of the Dreif, the idea “should no longer be taboo.” The goal of the Dreif is to reduce automobile traffic and bring in funds to accelerate the rollout of mass transit across the region.

“Technically simple”

Former cabinet director Jean-Claude Gayssot put forth two scenarios: a London-style system where a toll is charged to access the city center, or else converting to toll roads all of the highways within the A86 ring road. Under that plan the charge would only apply to expressways. “This system is technically simple to implement, thanks to the fiber optic network we have in place already,” says Mr. Rol Tanguy. The toll, which could be applied to all vehicles or restricted to heavy trucks, would bring in 300 million euros a year, according to the Dreif.

The Green deputy mayor in charge of transportation, Denis Baupin, who has always expressed hostility towards the idea of charging a toll to enter the center of Paris, doesn’t rule out the possibility of tolls on the expressways, especially for heavy vehicles. “I am opposed to a London-style congestion charge, which I see as discriminatory,” Mr. Baupin said, although he was “favorable” to the idea of toll roads around paris, “which would bring in money for mass transit.”

In France there are already toll facilities in urban areas: the Prado-Carénage tunnel under the Old Port of Marseilles, the east-west ring road around Lyons, the A14 expressway between La Défense and Orgeval in the Paris suburbs, and even the future A86 tunnel, the biggest in Europe, between Rueil-Malmaison and Versailles, planned to open in October.

Another difficulty is legislation. It is legal for the state [France] to impose a highway toll, but not a downtown congestion pricing zone. During the debate in 2003 over transferring the management of the national highways from the state to the départments [local governments about the size of a county], the UMP deputy representing Lyons, Christian Philip, put forth a proposal supported by the majority of deputies in his party as well as the Socialist Party, that would have given local governments the right to impose tolls on intra-city travel in municipalities with more than 100,000 people. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who was Prime Minister at the time, withdrew Mr. Philip’s amendment in order to “preserve purchasing power.” “The time was not ripe,” argues Mr. Philip, “for a French implementation of congestion pricing.”

Four years later, the thinking has evolved. Congestion pricing trials in other countries have reduced traffic and improved mass transit, and these results have bolstered the determination of officials who favor the idea. To avoid accusations of discrimination against lower-income motorists, some defenders of zone pricing have suggested implementing an “intermodal” card, to be purchased by all residents whether they are transit riders or motorists, as an incentive to chose mass transit. The revenue, estimated at 150 million euros for a city like Lyons, would be used to make public transit more attractive.

“We support the speedy implementation of congestion pricing in Paris,” said Jean Sivardière, president of the National Federation of Transit Riders (Fnaut), which argues that “motorists have an obligation to repay what they cost to the public.”

“We already have parking meters, and congestion pricing is just the next step in urban traffic management,” notes Yves Crozet, the director of the master’s program in Transportation and Commercial and Industrial Logistics at the University of Lyons II. “It isn’t so much that pollution problems are forcing us to implement tolls within cities,” he points out, “It is more that they are requiring us, on penalty of asphyxiation, to place restrictions on people’s movements.” The road network, he continues, is currently one of the last holdouts against the free market, and congestion pricing would apply the user-pays principle to it, just as it does to water or electricity.

Original : Péage urbain : les réticences parisiennes, Dominique Buffier, Le Monde, January 17, 2007