Hundreds of familiar Paris directional signs are soon headed to the scrap heap, or not. It depends on whether you’re listening to Mayor Anne Hidalgo or to her Director of Roads and Travel.
The director has announced that 1,800 or so signposts like the one above pointing the way to train stations, museums, public squares and more will be removed because they are ‘obstruct the passage of wheelchairs, prams and people.’ That’s according to the roads director, Caroline Grandjean. A deputy mayor, Emmanuel Gregoire added that “It corresponded to a need 20 or 30 years ago, but not today. They’ve become totally obsolete.” Most were installed over the past 30 years.
But no one seems to have clued in the Mayor, a candidate in next year’s presidential election, about it; she told France Blue that she was “really not aware of the removal of these large masts.. If these masts are removed, it’s certainly in order to replace them, of course we need masts […] we need signs. If there are too many, it’s necessary to clean up the landscape. You clean up, but you don’t remove, because not everybody has a GPS.”
So, can we say: “Signs point to confusion”?
