One day a month with no cars on the Champs Elysees

THE Champs-Elysees, the most famous boulevard in Paris, will be off-limits to cars on the first Sunday of every month starting in May, city hall officials announced yesterday.

The first pedestrian-only day will be May 8 rather than May 1, a public holiday when many of the council workers needed to run the scheme will be off work, Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s office said. From then on, cars will be banished from the 1.2-mile avenue between the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe on the first Sunday of every month when museums in Paris are also free to the public. It is lined with cafes and luxurious boutiques and is also home to the presidential palace.

Nine new routes will also be pedestrianised every Sunday and public holiday - adding to the 13 already subject to traffic restrictions under the “Paris Respire” anti-pollution programme.

Hidalgo, a Socialist, has made fighting the smog that periodically shrouds the French capital one of her top priorities.

The World Health Organization says fine-particle air pollution is responsible for about 42,000 premature deaths in France each year.