Vive la Vélorution

Socialist mayor brings a virtual seaside to the Seine.

A week ago, the car-hating Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, was wondering whether there would be enough visitors to his new beachside resort on the Seine's right bank to justify closing the city's busiest expressway and laying down grass and sand on the pavements for sunbathing and picnics.

Now he is joyfully defending himself against critics of the £1million scheme. Paris-Plage attracted three million citizens and tourists in the first week.

'I didn't think 300 deckchairs would be enough even when we foresaw about 15,000 visitors a day,' he said. 'But who could have thought 600,000 people would turn up on the opening day alone?'

The car lobby fumes in traffic jams knowing that the Georges Pompidou expressway, which normally attracts 200,000 cars a day, will be reserved to engineless traffic and legs for summers to come.

Perhaps the symbols of what Delanoë calls the Vélorution - a pun on his encouragement of cycling - are the cops who patrol the 3.8 kilometres of closed-off carriageway. Surveillance consists of three-man groups on roller skates, dressed in navy blue track suits. 'The crowds of walkers are much denser than we expected,' a patrol chief said. 'Our main problem has been sorting out the occasional flare-up when cyclists or rollers get impatient with the pedestrians. Otherwise, all is quiet. Our orders are to maintain an atmosphere of good humour. We're not even allowed to reproach topless sunbathers.'

The success of Paris-Plage depends on imagination. Blue banners and striped beach huts recall the windswept Channel coast, pitches for pétanque and volleyball evoke the Mediterranean, while the deckchairs, planted under 80 palm trees, give a touch of Biarritz elegance.

The most praised aspect has been the illusion of seaside holidays for thousands of poor families whose children play on supervised climbing walls or are entertained while their parents sit at open-air cafes. At night, Paris-Plage is devoted to popular concerts and dancing at an old-fashioned guingette.

The 'creator of events', Jean-Christophe Choblet, plans to extend Paris-Plage next year by incorporating two swimming pools and linking the banks of the Seine with water-borne tableaux.

'The right bank was appropriated for motor traffic in 1967 when Gaullists wanted to adapt the city to the car,' he recalled. 'I think we're well on the way to fulfilling Delanoë's promise to reconquer the riverside for pedestrians all year round.'