War of the roads over a one-way Paris street

Thank goodness for the prefect of the suburban Parisian département of Hauts-de-Seine, Patrick Strzoda, and the rest of his administrative team.

They've put an end, albeit temporarily perhaps, to a dispute between two neighbouring mayors within the département; a quarrel that had threatened to create havoc for local residents and businesses as well as rush hour commuters, and indeed proved to be the case on Monday.

That's when motorists using the Route Départementale 909 (RD 909) that runs through the communes of Levallois-Perret and Clichy found themselves faced at one point with one-way signs pointing in opposite directions.

Gilles Catoire the Socialist mayor of Clichy decided that as of August 31, the section of the RD 909 passing his commune would become a one-way road in the in the direction north-south.

It was a reaction to a decision made by Patrick Balkany, the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) mayor of the neighbouring commune of Levallois-Perret, to make the stretch of the same road that ran through his municipality one-way but in the opposite direction (south-north) on the same day.

The result on Monday was the inevitable absurd situation for motorists as they arrived at the point where the two sections of the road met...with one-way signs in place literally face-to-face preventing them from continuing ahead.

Instead police were on duty to redirect traffic to another street to avoid the newly-installed one-way systems which were causing near gridlock, testing nerves and of course generally adding to the woes (as well as journey time) of the nearly 20,000 vehicles that pass through the particular intersection every day.

Chaos had of course been on the cards for several weeks ever since Balkany announced his decision in an effort to decrease the amount of traffic passing along the Levallois stretch of the RD 909.

Catoire, fearing it would see a surge in congestion on the Clichy portion of the road, had threatened to retaliate with a tit-for-tat move, although to give him his due he did make the offer to Balkany to suspend the decision if his Levallois counterpart did the same.

Neither of course backed down and it was only after a morning of predictable mayhem that a "higher authority" in the shape of the prefect of Hauts-de-Seine, who presumably had a somewhat wider view on how everyone might be affected, put an end to the wrangling and suspended both newly-installed one-way systems.

So the status quo has been re-established - but for how long?

Watch this space.