At the start of Sunday’s Paris Marathon, new mayor Emmanuel Grégoire expressed a wish to create a long-distance running race around the French capital’s usually traffic-clogged ring road.
The new mayor of Paris may still be finding his feet in his new post, but he’s determined not to stand still, and has repeatedly suggested that the city’s périphérique – the multi-lane highway that runs around the edge of capital – could be turned over to fun runners at least once a year. With the traffic halted for the day, naturally.
But, Paris marathon fans shouldn’t worry — the venerable race, which attracted 60,000 runners this year and is set to mark its 50th edition in 2027, isn’t going anywhere.
Instead, Grégoire insisted the new race, if it gets the go-ahead, would be ‘an addition’.
“I need to discuss this with the neighbouring municipalities; it’s a Greater Paris project, and we’ll try to carry it out together.”
The idea would involve running the 35.4 kilometres of asphalt on the city’s ring road – slightly shorter than than the standard marathon course of 42 kilometres (26 miles).
The mayor insisted that it could work: “You have to understand why, because it sounds strange put that way: when you’re on the ring road, in quite a few sections, you’re looking down and seeing Paris from a distance. And it’s incredibly beautiful,” he said.
No date has been announced for a potential first edition.
The idea of the run links to Grégoire’s ambitious long-term plans for the famously traffic-choked and polluting road – to gradually reduce the lanes open to traffic until the road becomes an ‘urban park’ by 2050.
His idea, which is supported by the green party, is likely to run into stiff opposition, as did many of his predecessor Anne Hidalgo’s plans such as pedestrianising the banks of the Seine. She too, started small by closing the Seine banks to traffic for just a few days of the year before gradually expanding and making permanent the changes.
Today, the banks of the Seine are one of the most popular hang-out spots in the city – something that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago.
