MY FILM

As I was admiring a magnificent jumble of cars on the Place de l'Opéra, an unknown gentleman pointed out to me, among the countless stationary cars, a very long, very low and very shiny limousine in which sat a very small woman clutching a very small dog on her lap.

— What do you think? he asked me.

— I don't know anything about cars... But I find this young lady very pretty.

The gentleman shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.

— Pretty or not, he declared, she takes up something like nine square meters of the roadway. That's a lot, it's too much! Whether this lady takes up a lot of space in the lives of one or more men, that's all the same to us. But she also clutters up the boulevard and that can't leave us indifferent. See, around her, there are only private cars, taxis, etc. So many people who monopolize an excessive surface area, who spread out without discretion... And that is why the center of Paris is congested!
— No doubt. But what can be done about it?
— Sir, Paris is a very old city whose streets could, in other times, contain the rare carriages of the lords and the rich bourgeoisie. Today, everyone wants to have their carriage, even if it is numbered. It is impossible or else Paris must be rebuilt. In the meantime, there is only one way to solve the traffic problem: to ban private cars from the center of Paris, at certain times...
— How you go!
— Only public vehicles containing the maximum number of people and covering the minimum space will circulate in the reserved zone...
— But this is the dictatorship of the proletariat!
— In New York, sir, it is like this... Businessmen arrive in their cars at the edge of this central zone and, there, they take the subway, or some other means of public transport: many even go to their building using the 11 train... And this jogging does them a lot of good.
— Never in Paris...
— Why not? Create in the districts of the center of Paris light, fast and frequent buses, Each of them will transport twenty of these little women who, with their huge cars, take up so much space on the wooden pavement... And why should not the most sumptuous bankers take the "bus" like everyone else? Sir, the private car is a —paradox in our cities where human beings must squeeze or overlap...
— I do not see Mr. de Rothschild or Miss Sorel climbing into one of these democratic vehicles... But this traffic revolutionary was not listening to me. Pointing to a six-wheeled bus, he exclaimed:
— Heresy! The modern vehicle intended for our narrow streets must not grow horizontally, but vertically. We must return to the imperial of our fathers... Height, sir, height! Everything that spreads out is clutter: our future is in the air!
And the strange character, seizing the favorable moment, rushed onto the road, between two colossal limousines which, moreover, were empty.