Creating a bike lane, pedestrianising the streets around a school, rolling out a Limited Traffic Zone in a dense urban area: these initiatives, driven by Paris's Climate Action Plan, are reshaping the city. But until recently, their real impact on CO₂ emissions was nearly impossible to quantify. That is precisely the problem we set out to solve, in partnership with HERE Technologies, for the City of Paris.
In 2025, Paris deployed the NEXQT platform as part of its carbon neutrality objectives. By integrating HERE Traffic Analytics into our technology stack, we continuously monitor traffic flows, speeds and CO₂ emissions generated by cars and trucks across the city's entire road network, covering approximately 1,700 kilometres of public roads, as well as the Boulevard Périphérique (35 kilometres).
Measuring street by street
Before NEXQT, quantifying the carbon impact of an urban infrastructure project was a slow, costly and often imprecise exercise. Today, the City has access to a precise, continuous picture of its road traffic carbon footprint, project by project, street by street.
"Thanks to this data-driven approach, we can now measure the real-world effects of initiatives such as pedestrianising streets around schools or building new cycling infrastructure," says Patrick Pigache, Head of Data Strategy for Ecological and Climate Transition at the City of Paris.
The rue de Rivoli offers the most striking example: since the construction of a nearly 3-kilometre cycle lane, emissions along this corridor and its surroundings, including the Seine riverbanks, have fallen by an average of 34% over four years, and by as much as 73% on the rue de Rivoli itself. A result that is now documented, replicable, and ready to be communicated to elected officials and the general public alike.
Anticipating impacts, evaluating results
NEXQT goes beyond real-time monitoring. Drawing on over five years of historical traffic data provided by HERE Traffic Analytics, we enable Paris to establish a precise baseline for each intervention zone and estimate the expected impact of a project before it is implemented. The city's 500-plus planned School Streets can be assessed in advance by comparing their configuration against a wide range of similar situations already documented across the city.
This evaluation capability becomes particularly powerful in the context of the Limited Traffic Zone scheme, rolled out in Paris since November 2024. NEXQT gives the City the ability to continuously track changes in traffic, speeds and emissions within the zone, measure the gap against the initial baseline, and progressively refine its estimate of the scheme's real-world impact over time, a valuable tool for transparently documenting the effects of such a significant urban policy shift to Parisians.
A shared conviction with HERE Technologies
This Paris deployment is the result of a technology partnership built on a common belief: cities already hold most of the data they need to accelerate their low-carbon transition. What they lack are the tools to unlock it.
Paris is a flagship project for our partnership with HERE, but what we are building here is designed to travel. Our platform is already deployed across more than 70 local authorities in France and 3 across Europe, and can be rolled out in nearly 80 countries worldwide.
