Abandoned rail terminals always look tragic, but there's something mysterious about disused subway stations. They're hidden, like caves, or like the burial places of plans and desires that went nowhere. Paris has several ghost stations that mayoralty candidate and former cabinet minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet – NKM to Parisians – wants to turn to other uses.
But NKM, an ally of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, is trailing in the race to become Paris’s first female mayor, and likely won’t prevent Socialist candidate and current deputy mayor Anne Hidalgo from winning on March 30. Hidalgo’s electoral platform is heavy on housing and transport policy, notably silent on new underground sites for after-hours fun. NKM’s plans could well turn out to be as ghostly as the places they might have animated.