PARIS STREET PROBLEMS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18265, 26 December 1924, Page 15

PARIS STREET PROBLEMS.

The congestion of the Paris streets is still the theme of numberless newspaper cartoons and articles (writes tho correspondent of the London "Observer''). Some of the latest suggestions include a drastic increase in tho number of streets open only to one-way traffic, the complete banishment ot tramways from the centre of the town, and the compulsory relegation of all heavy transport to the riverside quays, the width of whose roadway is to be further increased by carrying the foot pavements on a series of brackets overhanging the river, as is now being done to widen the bridge at the Concorde. Those who fear the a>sthctie, effect of such a change upon the view of the river bank as seen from the south side may console themselves by remembering tha't it is not yet adopted—far less put into effect. An improvement which is really nearing completion, however, is the continuation of the Boulevard Haussmann to pierce through and join tho Grands Boulevards in the neighbourhood of the rue Drouout and the old cafo Viciinois. It m3y be doubted whether many traffic difficulties will be solved by the new street, but it has been remarked that it will involve a new evolution in the character of the boulevards. Among the houses which it will necessitate bringing down are the two bookshops of Roy and Flammarion, on either side of tho entrance, to the quaint old arcade called the Passage do l'Opcra, the whole of which is doomed. Palatial banks and cinemas aro gradually crowding cafe life away from the boulevard. Much of what remains of its literary associations will now be driven off by this new street.