The decision marks a step backward. In 2025, the city had wanted to make this major thoroughfare, which serves the market, a symbol of the development of soft mobility.
This choice divides opinion. Marc Arnold, of the CADRes Mulhouse association, deplores the space given back to the car.
Mulhouse, in the Haut-Rhin, is reopening one of its main shopping streets to car traffic, the one that provides access to the covered market.
Dozens of cars are driving there again, after a year-long traffic ban.
During the ban, only buses could share the street with bicycles and scooters.
Shopkeepers in the neighborhood see things differently. Fewer cross-border customers and fewer residents from surrounding villages were visiting their stores.
The tobacconist next to the market had also lost regular passing trade.
According to local shopkeepers, the return of cars was therefore essential. They link this necessity to the decline in habits observed since the ban.
The debate became central to the latest municipal elections.
The new mayor had promised to reopen the street to traffic. The municipality is now keeping that promise.
The thoroughfare is no longer reserved for buses and soft mobility. Cars are once again driving up to the approaches of the covered market.