Mayoral race tests support for green transformation

Marion Soulet rides to Paris' City Hall along a once car-choked road that is now a cycleway and a symbol of the French capital's urban green transformation that faces a test in a mayoral election on Sunday.

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Sarah Snafo

Soulet welcomes the construction of about 1,000 km (620 miles) of cycle lanes by leftist Mayor Anne Hidalgo over the last decade, which she says means nearly half of Parisians now ride a bicycle at least once a week.

The push to transform Paris from a polluted metropolis into a “15-minute-city” of bike lanes with more trees is the result of efforts by Hidalgo and her leftist predecessors, who have run City Hall for a generation.

That ecological legacy faces a reckoning in Sunday's election, with Hidalgo not running and right-wing rivals hoping to profit from voter fatigue over the increasingly car-free city, roadwork disruptions and mounting debt.

Opinion polls suggest the winner will either be Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire, who wants to double down on the green agenda, or conservative former minister Rachida Dati, who says the classical allure of Paris is being destroyed.