Fewer cars, more metro for Paris 2024 Games

FILE PHOTO: An elevated metro (or subway), operated by the Paris transport network (RATP), passes over a bridge in Paris, France, December 3, 2019. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo

PARIS – Paris 2024 officials will significantly reduce the use of dedicated cars and buses and have accredited personnel travel on public transport, using the city’s current system rather than pay for costly additions in times of high inflation.

After a three-day inspection by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), organizing committee chief executive Etienne Thobois said the number of vehicles would be lower than at the Tokyo Olympics, which fewer people attended, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Thanks to the IOC and the pooling of a certain number of vehicle fleets, we are going to drop the number of vehicles by 30% to 40% as opposed to the last games,” Thobois said.

Inflation is running at 5.8% in France, in part because of effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“I obviously am not naive; I know the world has changed,” Pierre-Olivier Beckers-Vieujant, the head of the IOC Coordination Commission, said.

“There has been no country that has been left unscathed if we think about inflation,” he added, suggesting Paris 2024 officials could make the most of one of the world’s best public transport systems.

“In the past, the transport system was built mainly in a specially dedicated system with stakeholders, at the request of the Olympic family,” he said.

“Today there is a great deal of flexibility to allow Paris to use, as best it can, public transport and pool transport systems.”

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