In honor of the tour to France this month, Bike League and I want to share what the city of Paris has done in favor of bicycle infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure, sustainability, and safe streets. It started on accident with a public strike in 2019 that crippled traffic and caused more people to ride bikes to commute. Then in 2020, people were hesitant to take public transportation, be crammed in a bus with a lot of people. So they installed temporary bike lanes and restricted areas to cars. People liked it, so those temporary changes became permanent. Now during rush hour, 18.9% of traffic is by bicycle, including people coming into Paris from the suburbs. 53% of city traffic is on foot, 30% is public transportation, and only 6.6% is by car. Overall, traffic has gone down 40% since these changes started, and mortality figures for cycling aren’t easy to track, but there’s only one in the year of 2023. I feel like in LA, we have one every week. Envision can see huge improvements in air quality in Paris over that time. Got to give credit to the visionary mayor of Paris since 2014, Anne Hidalgo. She’s part of the French Socialist Party. Sorry, that’s a bad word these days. But it seems to have done well for the city of Paris, and people like it. Recently, they voted to turn over 500 more streets to foot traffic instead of cars and to increase parking fees for SUVs. I hope this is encouraging to cities like LA and New York where you think the traffic problem is just too far gone to fix. It’s really not. that adding bike lanes, adding parking, making it safer to ride bikes and walk with a full network of safe cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. So, it’s not like, hey, here’s a bike lane in case you want to go from the end of this street to the end of that street and after that, screw you. The concept is called induced demand, meaning if you build it, they will come. If you build more lanes for cars, more cars will come and traffic will not be reduced. That’s measured worldwide over and over. But if you make it safe for cyclists and foot traffic, more people travel that way and traffic will be reduced.
15 Comments
LA has one road death every workday, to be precise.
More separate bike lanes: for sure.
Attributing this kind of improvement in air quality over the span of 17 years to cycling is completely bogus however since there are a million other factors which most likely have a larger impact including stricter regulation for ICE motors, a gradual shift towards electric cars, the rise of personal electric vehicles etc.
Thank you for highlighting this!
Good point about the lack of full network of safe cycling. Drivers complain about not seeing bike lanes used but a big issue in LA is they don't connect anywhere. So you get to ride next to traffic in a bike lane painted on the road for a couple blocks, then it ends and you're on your own!
Air , i like air ,especially when its clean, great post
Thank you! Very informative.
My first trip to Paris was in 2005 where I brought a bike. I have now lived in the Paris area for years now. The city was a lot dirtier than it is today, especially the air. I would literally have a collection of pollution in my nostrils after a few hours cycling around the city.
They practically stopped selling diesel vehicles and limit when old or otherwise more polluting cars can enter Paris. This made a huge difference.
The massive increase in bike lanes made driving in Paris really annoying, so less people are willing to do it if they don't need to – traffic reduced.
The Paris region is sprawling a bit, so large companies have moved out of Paris into the suburbs, further reducing people commuting into the city.
It seems like there are new rules regarding marking motorcycles/mopeds in Paris. If I showed you photo's of Paris in 2005, old polluting motorcycles and mopeds were everywhere. They're mostly gone now.
More bike lanes are good, but so much of the new riders are on e-bikes which is at odds sometimes with conventional bicycles. I've seen terrible accidents because of this.
Paris has lost some of its charm over the years but is much cleaner if not a little sterile. The US and state governments will never be as bikeable and liveable as places like Paris. It's one of the many reasons why I don't live in the US anymore.
My wife and I just returned from Denmark. Bike lanes nearly everywhere. Cyclists everywhere! The infrastructure for cyclists is incredible. We can work towards that.
i like this version of phil i wonder if it has an american audience though…
Love this…your points and data are spot on. As a guy from LA, living in Tucson, and currently in Spain, having the appropriate infrastructure is huge! Tucson has heaps of interconnected lanes and bike paths…though could have more segregated lanes to incent more cycling. Spain needs more, too!!!
Yep and now people depends on public services, which get their money from the government, that has no money… So people won't be able to freely move because all they're going to have is a f*ing bike
By accident not on accident
I visited Paris last October. First time, it seemed like bicycle heaven, it seemed like every Frenchie on a bike had a big smile. ❤
The lack of a network or safe routes between one bike lane/trail and the next is one of the things I struggle with in Milwaukee and their infrastructure plans/execution. We have PBL near where I live that's on a buat street and has random exits into right turn lanes. They're about 1 total mile and don't connect to anything, including our Oak Leaf Trail or even the library.
The USA will never act as intelligently as this.