Three and a quarter hours of debates, sometimes tense. The seven main candidates for mayor of Paris spared nothing on the merits during their exchanges this Wednesday evening on LCI. Housing, Security, transport and pollution… everything has been tackled. A lot of background and quantified arguments but in which some approximations and even errors have crept. The Parisian has listed them.
"Pollution has dropped by 30% since 2001"
Anne Hidalgo
It's more complicated
According to the mayor of Paris, air quality has improved significantly since the election of the socialist Bertrand Delanoë in 2001. According to data from AirParif, the body responsible for analyzing air pollution in Ile-de-France, the concentration of three of the four pollutants has dropped by around a third in fourteen years. For nitrogen dioxide, for example, we went from 46 µg / m3 in the 2002-2004 tranche to 34 µg / m3 in 2016-2018.
Except that, and Anne Hidalgo does not say it, the ozone concentration increased over the same period, going from 37 µg / m3 in 2002-2004 to 40 µg / m3 in 2016-2018 in Ile-de-France. And "the same trends over three years apply to Paris and the whole of Ile-de-France", told us in early February Pierre Pernot, engineer at AirParif.
In Anne Hidalgo's defense, this increase is not only due to her action, far from it. Indeed, the ozone concentration "increases everywhere in the northern hemisphere, because the climate is milder", notes the Airparif expert.
"The number of cars has decreased, the number of traffic jams has increased at the same time"
Cedric Villani
True
This is one of the favorite angles of attack for Anne Hidalgo's opponents: the deterioration of traffic in Paris. And the dissident LREM candidate is quite right. Car traffic in inner Paris, defined as the number of vehicles compared to that of the kilometers traveled, fell by 5% between 2017 and 2018, according to the travel observatory. However, it is stable on the device. Between 2002 and 2017, traffic in Paris had already dropped by 34%. And the trend continues in 2019, even if the precise figures are not yet public.
On the other hand, the level of traffic jams increased last year, from 36% to 39% according to the GPS operator TomTom. That is to say that the average time lost in traffic jams was equivalent to 39% of the journey time when the traffic is fluid. Questioned at the beginning of February, Anne Hidalgo's team recognized this increase. But she was delighted with the 42nd place obtained by Paris in the world ranking of the most congested cities (and 19th in Europe).
"The left is gargling with diversity but you are creating ghettos"
Rachida Dati
It is complicated
This is one of the main lines of attack of candidate LR on the record of Anne Hidalgo since the start of the campaign. She accuses the outgoing mayor of having undermined social mix in Paris by concentrating low-cost housing in certain districts. It has been proven that the social housing stock in Paris is unevenly distributed over the municipal territory. The 7th arrondissement of Rachida Dati thus had only 603 social housing units in 2018, compared to 36,000 for the 19th century. "It is certain that the 7th is not a ghetto of social housing," retorted Anne Hidalgo.
Despite the efforts it puts forward, the Paris town hall is struggling to create new ones. So that the peripheral districts still accumulate the greatest number of housing creations during the last mandate. So many difficulties which do not allow it to date to reach the objectives of the law equality and citizenship, supposed to increase the number of poor families in the affluent districts.
"You only have 29 people at the town hall to control Airbnb"
Agnes Buzyn
True
It was one of the little moments of tension that marked this first debate. Unlike her main opponents, Agnès Buzyn refuses to reduce the number of nights in a main accommodation that can be rented through tourist rental platforms like Airbnb. For her, the practice is ineffective. And if some have fun breaking the rules, the candidate calls to increase the number of officers responsible for carrying out the checks.
They are indeed 29 today. David Belliard also suggests going up to 100 agents. Because in terms of the number of nights, the future mayor of Paris can do nothing. Only a law would make the existing system more stringent.
"We will propose a referendum for the cancellation of the organization of the Olympic Games"
Danielle Simonnet
Very complicated
The candidate invested by La France insoumise is the only one to post a firm opposition to the holding of the Olympic Games in France in 2024. Here is why, with her running mate Vikash Dhorasoo, she proposes a referendum so that Parisians can give their opinion on the subject . The candidate evokes a "complete democratic denial" in the Parisian candidacy.
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It is technically possible to cancel Olympic Games. The fact remains that since the Denver Olympics were canceled after a public consultation - and which only concerned financial considerations - the IOC has taken care to set up enormous legal barriers to prevent such a situation from happening again. . Above all, the cancellation of the Olympic Games would also be very expensive and damage the image of France internationally.
"Half of the city has private garbage collection, the other public"
Agnes Buzyn
True
In half of the boroughs (2nd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 17th, and 20th), garbage collection is managed by the City. Garbage collectors therefore have the status of municipal agents. The other half is entrusted to private companies, four of which share this waste collection market: Urbaser, Pizzorno, Veolia and Derichebourg.
A total of 2,784 garbage collectors are responsible for collecting the waste produced throughout the capital, according to the latest annual report from the Paris city hall for 2017. Two-thirds are employees of the City, the others work for the private sector. According to the boroughs, garbage collection takes place "half in the morning, between 6 am and 12 pm, and half in the evening, between 5 pm and 11 pm," says the town hall of Paris.
"Bus speed has halved"
Agnes Buzyn
False
The candidate LREM highlighted what she had already advanced Thursday, February 27 on RTL: the average speed of buses in Paris would have "halved in six years". This statement is very exaggerated. According to a document from the Union of Public and Railway Transport, “in 2018, the commercial speed of buses in Paris dropped to 8 km / h during peak hours on major lines of the network, compared to 16.9 km / h in average in 2016 ”. Except that this reduction by half concerns only a small part of the network and at peak times.
More generally, Ile-de-France Mobilités ensures that "the average commercial speed of buses [in Paris] has decreased by around 1 km / h between 2015 and 2018, from 9 to 8 km / h". User associations are also surprised by the development put forward by Agnès Buzyn, deeming it disproportionate.