The LR president of the metropolis Véronique Sarselli announces Thursday July 2 the return of cars to the city center of Lyon, against the opinion of the environmentalist municipal majority, one year after the implementation of the ban on vehicle transit. The limited traffic zone (ZTL) established in June 2025 and which concerns 55 hectares of the peninsula, or around fifteen streets, will be relaxed during the summer and its application restricted to evenings and weekends.
“A mobility policy must be ecological, but it must also be readable, fair and acceptable,” argues Véronique Sarselli, quoted in a press release published on the occasion of her first 100 days at the head of the metropolis of Lyon, a community with expanded powers that she won in the last elections against the outgoing environmental team.
After a year of existence, the metropolis notes that the ZTL “impacts” the work of professionals, who represent 85% of rights holders. The community also emphasizes that the use of private underground car parks on the peninsula is “down 20%” since the establishment of the ZTL.
The metropolis notes, however, that “residents welcome the return of calm, particularly at night, after years marked by urban rodeos”, as well as an increase in pedestrian traffic on Saturdays. It therefore provides that the ZTL will now be applied from Monday to Thursday from 7:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., and from Friday at 3:00 p.m. until Monday at 5:00 a.m. (same for public holidays).
A decision that makes environmentalists jump
According to the metropolis, “the reduction in the number of authorization requests and requests should generate operating savings estimated between 500,000 and one million euros per year”. The decision, coupled with the announcement of the reopening to vehicles of rue Grenette, a lane reserved for buses which has become a symbol of the tense points of view on the pedestrianization of the center, caused environmentalists in the city and the metropolis to revolt.
“Nothing is wrong with this decision,” reacted the mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet, regretting the absence of both a “diagnosis” and a “discussion”. To remedy this, he calls on the president of the metropolis to organize a referendum on the issue. The environmentalist councilor, re-elected in March, also questioned “the reasons for such haste” at the symbolic end of 100 days in office.
He recalled the rapid “dislocation of his majority”, after the withdrawal by Véronique Sarcelli of Jean-Michel Aulas, his first vice-president in the metropolis, following a complaint of rape against a close advisor of the former president of OL, and the explosion in the wake of Jean-Michel Aulas’s political group at the town hall where he was the leader of the opposition. Yasmine Bouagga and Sophia Popoff, co-presidents of the Lyon environmental group, for their part denounced a decision “contrary to all logic” against a backdrop of heatwave and poor air quality.
