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Can Paris make the Metro ‘fully accessible’ for people with disabilities?

Disability rights groups and leaders from the Paris region have signed a pact promising to make the Paris Metro accessible for people with disabilities - here's what they're actually agreeing to and how long this could take.

Published: 10 September 2024 17:15 CEST
Can Paris make the Metro 'fully accessible' for people with disabilities?
A man sits in his wheelchair on top of the stairs of a metro station in Paris on September 26, 2018 during a demonstration called by the Paralysed Association of France (APF) to demand more accessibility in their daily life and protest against the lack of accessibility for disabled and handicapped people in urban transports. (Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP)

On the penultimate day of the Paris Paralympic Games, the head of the region, Valérie Pécresse, signed a pact with the city of Paris and the APF-France Handicap association to engage in the ‘titanic’ project of making the Paris Metro system accessible to people with disabilities.

The Games had highlighted just how poorly Paris scores when it comes to accessibility, with its Metro system almost entirely barred to people in wheelchairs or those with reduced mobility.

Pécresse, who is also the head of Ile-de-France Mobilités, noted the importance of updating the Metro system in light of the city’s ageing population and for environmental reasons. Pécresse has also called for holding a local referendum to get Parisians on board.

During the Paralympics closing ceremony, the president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Andrew Parsons, referenced Pécresse’s announcement.

“We all have a collective responsibility to take advantage of the momentum of the Paralympic Games to make this world more inclusive (…) We must enable people with disabilities to excel off the playing field.

“The best Paralympic legacies are those that continue after the Games and I call on all those involved to make the dream of an accessible Paris Metro a dazzling reality,” he said.

Then he addressed Pécresse specifically, adding: “Thank you to the President of the Île-de-France region Valérie Pécresse for her ambition to make the Metro accessible.”

What are the specifics of the plan?

So far, things are quite vague. In fact even calling this a ‘plan’ might be going too far – what the leaders signed was more of a statement of ambition.

The earliest estimates suggest that such a project would require between €15-20 billion in funding over a period of 20 years, which Pécresse proposed would be shared equally between the city of Paris, the region of Ile-de-France and the State, Le Figaro reported.

Pécresse suggested to the French press that the work could begin with Metro Line 6, which would be easier to make accessible due to the fact that it is mostly above-ground. 

Nevertheless, work on this line alone would cost between €600 and €800 million.

The goal would be to finally make the Metro accessible for people with reduced mobility – although there are some Metro stations that will never be entirely accessible, due to historical constraints and ‘an already congested Paris underground’, MesInfos reported. 

In terms of how the project would be paid for, Paris deputy mayor, Lamia El Araje, who focuses on accessibility for people, said: “We have to go and find the revenue,” noting a possible increase in the tourist tax, which she argued has been done in other international capitals such as Berlin and New York.

In Paris, this tax currently ranges from €0.65 (per night per person) for the most basic campsites to €14.95 for the highest end hotels (palaces).

READ MORE: How much is the ‘tourist tax’ in France?

What is the Paris Metro situation currently?

As things stand, only 29 metro stations on just two lines (11 and 14) are accessible to people with reduced mobility.

The RER (commuter train) assures that lines A and B, as well as the tram and bus networks, are intended to be accessible.

READ MORE: ANALYSIS: How accessible is Paris for people with disabilities?

However, there are still some challenges on these services be too. A bus line is deemed accessible once 70 percent of its stops are classified that way, which means many stops are not available for people with reduced mobility. This may be due to technical issues, such as an inability to enlarge or raise the sidewalk.

Also, most buses only allow for a maximum of one wheelchair.

As for the city’s tram system – the challenge is that most trams only serve the city outskirts and suburbs, so they are not very useful for tourists or people needing to get into the city centre.

Although the RER, the commuter train that serves the city and its outer suburbs – including links into Paris from its two airports – might be more ‘accessible’ than the Metro, many stations require the assistance of a person working there.

This means that a person with a disability would need to plan or call ahead to ensure staff will be present to assist them.

In the future, the new Grand Paris Express lines (15, 16, 17 and 18) will be entirely accessible, which means that 68 accessible stations will be added to the Paris Metro network by 2030.

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PARIS

Paris and Milan judged closest in the world to becoming ’15-minute cities’

Paris and Milan are among the cities closest to reaching the urban planning goal of being a "15-minute city," while car-dependent metropolises in the United States and elsewhere lag behind, a worldwide analysis said on Monday.

Published: 16 September 2024 17:29 CEST
Paris and Milan judged closest in the world to becoming '15-minute cities'

In fact, the central areas of many cities already meet the definition of a 15 minute-city, which means that residents are within a quarter-hour walk or bike ride from everything they need to a lead a good life, the analysis found.

But even within a city, there are often stark differences between the wealthy inner cities and the urban sprawl on their outskirts, according to the Italian researchers behind the new study.

The concept of the 15-minute city gained traction during the Covid pandemic, when lockdowns put more focus on local neighbourhoods.

It has since been embraced by dozens of mayors around the world — and become the target of conspiracy theorists online.

For the new study, published in the journal Nature Cities, the researchers built an online database looking at roughly 10,000 cities globally.

They used open source data to map out how far of a walk or cycle residents were from different services, including shops, restaurants, education, exercise and healthcare.

“A lot of people already live in a 15-minute city,” study co-author Hygor Piaget Monteiro Melo told AFP.

But it depends on where you look within a city, he said, because of the inequality in access to services between the centre and periphery.

No ‘utopia’

What is clear, the researchers noted, is that population density is a crucial factor — if enough people are living close enough to each other, it is much easier for them to have easy access to services.

This meant that somewhat smaller yet relatively dense cities such as Italy’s Milan or Spain’s Barcelona scored well on their map, which was made available online.

When it came to the biggest cities, “Paris is an outlier,” lead study author Matteo Bruno told AFP.

The mayor of Paris embraced the concept in 2020, and a “considerable fraction” of the city is below the 15-minute mark, the study said.

Some European cities have a head start because they were built centuries ago at a time before cars — when basically all towns had to be 15-minute cities, the researchers said.

Cities built more recently with cars specifically in mind — particularly in the United States — fared far less well on the map.

Atlanta in particular stood out as being a long way from being a 15-minute city. Future Olympic host Los Angeles also lagged behind most others for walkability, as did several Chinese cities including Chongqing.

But when it comes to cities, there are always trade-offs — and there is no single right answer, the researchers said.

“The 15-minute city is often presented as a utopia — it’s not,” Bruno said.

Americans in sprawled-out cities usually have their own houses and backyards, while Europeans in densely populated cities tend to live in apartments, illustrating the important role played by culture, Bruno said.

And central parts of US cities such as New York, San Francisco and Milwaukee were under the 15-minute threshold.

“Manhattan is definitely one of the most 15-minute places ever in the world,” said Bruno, a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Rome.

‘Conspiracy mongers’

There has been confusion about the concept in the past, the researchers lamented.

For example, “traffic has nothing to do with the 15-minute city,” Bruno said.

In fact, slow traffic could indicate an area is more pedestrian friendly, he added.

Yet it was new “low-traffic zones” in the UK that turned the ire of conspiracy theorists towards 15-minute city proponents.

Confusing the two ideas, online groups including vaccine and climate sceptics falsely claimed that 15-minute cities were part of a secret plot to restrict the movement of citizens.

The Italian researchers, who have themselves been targeted by “Twitter haters,” emphasised that nothing about the 15-minute city concept involves confining anyone.

Researcher Carlos Moreno, a high-profile proponent of 15-minute cities who has advised Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, was also “attacked by the worldwide conspiracy mongers,” he told AFP.

Moreno welcomed the new study, praising how the idea had swiftly become a topic of interest for researchers around the world.

Just last week, Valerie Pecresse, the right-wing head of the greater Paris Ile-de-France area, presented a plan for a 20-minute region, he pointed out.

Bruno said that the 15-minute metric is just one element in the “recipe” that makes a good city.

Other parts of the recipe include tackling inequality and segregation, improving public transport, reducing traffic and so on, he said.

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