During a stroll through the streets of the 1st arrondissement of Paris, you may have been captivated by the picturesque streets surrounding the Les Halles district.
Then, caught up in your thoughts, you found yourself on the ground, hitting a poorly sealed paving stone.
Olivier has seen this scene dozens of times in front of his night establishment located on rue des Lombards.
For several years, the fiftieth anniversary has increased the number of reports to the Paris town hall on the mobile application
“DansMaRue”
, where it is possible to declare an anomaly in public spaces, to denounce the broken roads and dangerous for passers-by.
“More than 20 since 2021
,” he says, screenshot of the site as proof.
Olivier, who repeatedly repeats that he does not want to
“create controversies”
and does not wish to be
“in the media”
, lost patience in mid-March with the state of the road a stone's throw from his establishment.
“I saw around twenty passers-by fall, and even a woman hit in the head.
We laid him down full length and treated the wound on his face.”
Heavy vehicle traffic blamed
On March 16, faced with the lack of reaction from the City to his emails, and in view of
"the massacre of (s) his customers who fell in front of (s) his establishment"
, he decided to take the lead and finance the repair of public roads
“for the safety”
of its consumers and pedestrians.
Cost of the invoice: 1032 euros.
The damaged paving stones have given way to a new flattened and featureless roadway.
“
I don’t want the town hall to reimburse me
,” he slips.
I just want the well-being of my clients who enter my establishment and not their falls.
»
On the City's side, we assure that "
the services intervened on numerous occasions"
following Olivier's reports, but we mainly point the finger at "
the traffic of heavy vehicles - particularly for deliveries - which regularly damage the paving".
The passage of these vehicles “
is not made for such intensive use in predominantly pedestrian and very narrow lanes,”
continues the Paris town hall.
Faced with this situation, the services are considering a more global intervention in the Les Halles sector.”