THE traffic-choked heart of Paris is to become a car-free oasis under a radical scheme drawn up by Bertrand Delanoë, the city’s flamboyant Socialist Mayor.

By 2012 — when Paris hopes to stage the Olympic Games — only residents, buses, delivery vans and emergency vehicles will be allowed inside a three square-mile zone of the Right Bank, from the Bastille to the Concorde squares. The area, enclosed by the Seine and the grands boulevards, includes the Louvre, the Opéra, Les Halles and the Ile de la Cité, with Notre Dame cathedral and the Palais de Justice.

Mr Delanoë’s team emphasised that the project is not due for approval until next year, but the Mayor is making clear that he aims to stake his future on a traffic project that goes further than the congestion charge in Central London. M Delanoë and Ken Livingstone, the two cities’ left-wing mayors, have been locked in friendly rivalry since taking office. Both are bidding for the Olympics.

M Delanoë, 54, who was elected in 2001, frequently proclaims his affection for London. However, the Paris Mayor, who emotional and eloquent style contrasts with that of the pithy and pugnacious Mr Livingstone, has rejected London-style tolls as “elitist” and unsuited to the French capital.

Until now, he has used more indirect methods to force drivers out of their cars and on to public transport. By multiplying bus lanes, cutting parking space, widening pavements and starting work on a boulevard tramway, he has created mega-jams, reducing traffic by nearly 10 per cent.

The Paris Mayor, who wields far greater executive power than Mr Livingstone, is perhaps best-known for his introduction of the Paris Plage, the summertime conversion of a stretch of bank of the River Seine into a public artificial beach.

Denis Baupin, M Delanoë’s Green Party deputy, said that the model for the proposed Paris traffic scheme was Rome, where longstanding restrictions in the centre have cut traffic by 25 per cent.

The same experts who advised Mr Livingstone studied Paris and recommended a closed zone rather than tolls, he said. This is because 50 per cent of the traffic in Central Paris, which is compact and more residential than London, was using the zone for simple transit.

While suburban commuters fume against M Delanoë’s traffic campaign, about 80 per cent of the city’s residents approve and want more, according to a municipal survey last year.

The motoring lobby has counter-attacked against the planned ban, which was leaked to the media over the weekend. Christian Gérondeau, president of the National Automobile Club Fédération, said: “This plan will make Paris a ghetto, cutting it off from the suburbs. The car is indispensable for the cultural and economic activity of Paris,” he said.

M Baupin, who is seen by taxi drivers as the ayatollah of the anti-car religion, said that the lobby was wrong. “Le tout-automobile is not a factor of economic development,” he said. “Le tout-automobile” is the critics’ label for the pro-car policy that was launched in the early 1970s by President Pompidou and was pursued by Jacques Chirac when he was Mayor of Paris from 1977-95 .

Paris lost hundreds of thousands of jobs during the pro-car policy, which opened up the city by turning the Seine embankment into a cross-Paris motorway, M Baupin said.

The first phase of M Delanoë’s three-part plan is well under way. The aim is to curb transit and reduce traffic speed to 30kph (18mph). Parking fees are being tripled and rules, long neglected by drivers who freely park on restricted areas, are being enforced by a new army of wardens.

In the next phase, from 2007, the embankment motorway will be restricted and the car-free zone will be imposed at weekends. If re-elected in 2007, M Delanoë and his team will start to impose the full traffic-free zone, which covers the first four arrondissements.

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