Paris city centre goes car-free for a day | Hacker News Reader

Paris city centre goes car-free for a day

theguardian.com

233 pointshliyan214 comments

What I think this demonstrates is something that a lot of cities are waking up to. The car is not a friend of the urban landscape.

A lot of cities are now prioritising walking/cycling/public transport over the ability to drive anywhere and everywhere and this is having a profound effect on health and well being of their residents. It is hard though.

Events like this show what is possible.

Totally agree. Helps to point out how much we've been subsidizing personal auto use - mainly by not charging user fees enough to cover all costs of driving.

That's the thing. In the UK the cost to the NHS (UK Free Healthcare) is not costed into the price people pay at the fuel pump. I believe revenue from Car Tax/Fuel/VAT is about £48 billion, however the cost to the country is calculated at about £70 billion.

+ 28 billion quid spent on roads.

The calculation isn't so simple. The use of cars may enable additional business. If that leads to an additional £50 billion in tax revenue, then it would be worthwhile, from a bookkeeping perspective.

On the other hand, more pedestrian traffic also may enable additional business, as people are more likely to wander in and out of shops, and they aren't competing for limited parking availability.

Cycle Lanes have a similar impact. Cars go from A to B. Walking/Cycling goes via A to B via CDEF. Some studies have shown significant (150%) increases in business when they have been introduced.

What about the pollution, road maintenance, time spent commuting, and accidents? I think you are making a similar argument to taxpayers footing the bill for stadiums.

I wasn't being complete, only saying that it's not a simple calculation.

Only on the basis that if cars were banned that commerce would not take place, which is unlikely.

Strictly speaking, that is not true, as Venice and Mackinaw Island demonstrate.

That was my point. If there are no cars people find other ways to do business.

Ahh, I read 'which is unlikely' as referring to 'cars were banned' not 'commerce would not take place'. My apologies.

If you're interested in more discussion on this, Robin Chase, founder of ZipCar, often comments on the actual/total cost of operating a car

AAA puts it around $10k/yr for USA

I think it's possible, but one time events are misleading, in my opinion. People use exceptional measures that are not sustainable in the long term - out here, some people even took a vacation day when our cities did the "day without cars".

The issue is one of persuasion. By having these days it gives local authorities the ability to demonstrate what is possible and makes actual implementation of smaller leaps (e.g. segregated cycle tracks) easier to swallow.

If no cars is the goal, how are segregated cycle tracks a leap in the right direction?

Cars are local optima. In a 100% car city you need a lot of car infrastructure and there is pressure to keep building more. In a 25% car city the pressure switches to maximizing other modes of transit, but as long as 98% car city is worse it's really hard for cities to make that jump.

PS: It's really a lot like social networks, dropping G+ vs Facebook is really more a question of which your friends spend time on not which one has better software.

Because it is not about "removing" the car, but making it the most difficult thing to use vs any other type of transport. For example, you can make the most direct route to a place via bike or walking, but if you use a car you have to use the ring road to get from one side of the city to the other. You enable cars to go into a city, but not through a city.

The other issue is that people equate the idea that people can walk and cycle together. This is really uncomfortable for walkers. You need to segregate space for each type of transport.

The mayor or Paris and her council are thinking of doing more of days like this one, and to extend the perimeter to include the entirety of Paris.

https://twitter.com/Anne_Hidalgo/status/648850877189627904 - very roughly "The day without cars is going to happen again in 2016 and we'd like it to be applied to the entirety of Paris"

https://twitter.com/Anne_Hidalgo/status/648851305612640256 - very roughly "We could consider days without cars happening more often. We're thinking of a monthly occurrence maybe"

An event like this is important as an eye opener, to show the citizens that there are alternatives to the current car focused city. If enough people like the alternative version, it will be easier to make reforms to reduce traffic in the future.

Yeah thats the thing. It takes me 3 times as long to get to work without a car as with one. I can live with that, because I can read on the bus and don't have to pick up kids.

If I had to be home with somebody though? Fuck that shit. Plus I hate spending time with strangers, so I much prefer being in my car rather than on public transport.

Cycle.

Takes as long as the bus, because I have to change and shower when I get there and I have to have spare clothing if/when it rains.

Besides I didn't spend a ton of money on a drivers license (they are really expensive in Denmark) to Cycle.

Try an e-bike. It should let you coast into work at 15-20mph without working a sweat. Rent one if you can to try it out.

Exactly, we used to have those every year in Montreal. Downtown would be completely closed for motor vehicles.

The first year, it was so refreshing, people were smiling and relaxing. Then the next year people started to get pissed as they realised blocking cars from going somewhere would not magically spawn buses and metro stations. The year after they reduced the perimeter, then the schedule, then the perimeter again, to a point where it is now rather pointless.

It is now this day of the year when you might be late at work because they closed a few blocks and put some grass and electric car demonstrations on that street that is almost always pedestrian anyways.

Well, to be fair Paris has an excellent subway/suburban train network

So it makes it feasible to go to Paris intramuros from anywhere pretty much

But is it easy enough to park your car outside of the city ?

I think the whole point is precisely to make it impractical to own or rely on a car.

Or more precisely that you do not need to own a car to live in the city. That does not mean you should not have access to one through a car share programme or cheap car rental.

Roll on self-drive cars!

Its Paris, cars there get burned pretty often. It already can't be cheap or easy to have a car in Paris, people probably have them because they are worth it, which means the alternatives suck. Make them not suck.

> It already can't be cheap or easy to have a car in Paris, people probably have them because they are worth it, which means the alternatives suck.

The public transportation system in Paris is excellent, maybe the best in Europe. Using a car in Paris, in the city center, has a lot more to do with status. It's harder to fix that.

Depends, looks like some RER stations have parking available, from a quick googling

But lots of people live in a walkable/bikeable distance from a station

Paris is definitively livable without a car. The RER, trolley, metro and bus network is so dense that it absolutely makes no sense to use a car (this is far more longer, dangerous and stressful to use a car), even when you live in suburb. I do live in Paris suburb. People just got very bad habits, but they could manage to change it through education and state promotion like this day. This day was not enough though, and it should be a reccurent event, I mean not yearly but monthly or something.

> But lots of people live in a walkable/bikeable distance from a station

In paris itself yes, but if you live in the suburbs last time I was in paris there weren't really large and convenient parking options on the outskirt of the city itself, so you couldn't trivially leave your car and hop in the underground or a bus.

More than this, even if you live quite far from Paris, there is this very dense network of buses and RER (suburb trains) that always makes possible to join the center of Paris easily. It sometimes costs a bit of walking, but it is not that hard.

Yeah you should try it when you're 70 years old, disabled, or it's 3am.

Oh man, you are the first person to bring up the elderly and disabled. I bet we can't figure that out at all so we better not try.

Or, municipalities continue to provide on demand transit using small vans to the elderly and disabled, since no one said there can't be exemptions to the car free rules.

Perfect so now you still need perfectly functioning roads and traffic infrastructure, but only use it at 1% capacity while the public transports are completely over-capacity.

Come on, can't you imagine that people would CHANGE their habits if their environment changed? We wouldn't make the same kind of choices about where to go, where to put businesses, how to move around, etc.

And besides, it's not like Paris doesn't have a precedent of the state forcefully changing the physical landscape of the city, although it may not be too popular with some: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...

Incentives matter, but the effect is never what you want.

Put more bicycle lanes up and people will buy mopeds (which polutes like crazy), or take jobs elsewhere, or something else crazy.

A good example is probably Australia where they made helmets mandatory for adults on bicycles. So many more people choose to take their car that the number of saved lives were offset by the amount of exercise lost.

I know that there are unintended consequences of everything. You have to have the courage to reevaluate your choices, not just make a change once and then be done forever.

A sizeable fraction of people who were biking regularly chose to switch to cars rather than wear a helmet?

That's extraordinary, I'm not saying it didn't happen but it astonishes me.

Cycling in Australia dropped by about 2% between 2011 and 2013. [1] The biggest issue with helmet laws though is that they significantly neuter bike share programs because people don't want to cary a helmet or use a shared helmet.

[1] page 26 http://www.cycle-helmets.com/cps-2013.pdf

So, helmet laws are actually a terrible example of "effects aren't what you want", at least, it's a terrible example if the implication is that we are getting an effect that we don't expect. Now, it's possible that the legislators didn't understand this, but cycling advocates were and are well aware that helmet laws cause reduced bicycle use. Here's an article with sources which claims to be from 2006, the website copyright notice is 2013, so at the very least, it's from right around when Australia implemented it's helmet law. http://bicycleaustin.info/laws/helmet-laws-bad.html

If the only vehicles using the road are public transit vans, we can clearly reduce the size of roads and the infrastructure. The vastly reduced wear and tear on the roads would free up government money for investment in public transit.

Multi-modal transport is the goal. Car-free isn't the goal. It's a push to get people to consider alternatives where possible.

The stable state in the future may simply be less roads (reclamation into parks/walk/cycling usage)

Making one mode artificially suck is not the right way to go about it. City bikes (Velib) were an awesome initiative and I use them every day, not because I don't want to use a car, simply because it's the best mode for most of my movements. The goal should be to have a wide array of choices and let people choose the best mode for their needs and their means, not to choose for them.

When you're sufficiently old, disabled, or sleepy, driving isn't such a good idea either.

They're not necessarily the one driving. Have you never driven for your old parent/grandparent ?

It also works at 3am, lots of buses.

It's also easy to use the River Seine as an artery to walk anywhere in the core of Paris. You can quite easily move between the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th arrondissements by walking the Seine and taking one of the many bridges to get where you want to go. The Seine is the real car free (well, not entirely but it's geared for walking and cycling) highway for pedestrians.

I was in Paris last week. On Monday, trying to head to the airport from Porte de Clichy (on the 13 line), I failed to board two subway trains in succession. They were so jam-packed with people I could not physically get on the cars. It was not for lack of effort: I have ridden the Tokyo subway during rush hour, so I am not shy.

After two failed attempts, I left the station and caught a taxi.

I am not saying Paris does not have a very good train system compared to many places, but it seems to me it would not be so easy to expect it to handle all of the people who currently drive.

I sure many cities (European) have realized this for quite some time. London has had a congestion charge for over a decade, for example.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge

In Europe gas has been made expensive and mass transit has always been recommended. In the US only one major city has sufficient mass transit so you don't need a car.

I suspect there are more cities than just Boston where you can get around without a car. What about NYC?

I meant NYC.

Dane here. We have the most expensive gas in the world and the most expensive cars in the world. We still mostly drive (we do bicycle a lot compared to the US, yes, but we still drive a ton), just in older or smaller cars.

Why? Because cars are awesome. They go exactly from where you want to where you want to go, when you want, 24h a day and you can always get a seat, if music is being played, it is your choice of music.

That is basically everything public transportation is not. Given how little time people think they have, they will always prefer cars.

> We have the most expensive gas in the world

No you don't. It's currently more expensive in Germany, Britain, Ireland, Norway, ...

Car tax is very high, but I think it's even higher in Vietnam -- around 150%.

http://benzinpreis.de/international.phtml?kontinent=EU&s=2

There is an unfortunate difference between theory and practice, however.

My local council keeps promoting healthy commuting and walking for leisure.

At the same time the roads service, which operates at a national level, just 'upgraded' a local intersection and replaced one single pedestrian crossing across the road with three, each independent and spanning a short gap between islands.

Until all agencies are coordinated in promoting pedestrianism, walkers will continue to feel third-class.

Also you'll note that when you push the button as a pedestrian it can take up to 3 minutes for it to change. I find this exceptionally inefficient. You get pedestrians chancing to cross and then the lights change.

Atlanta has started doing something similar on Peachtree called Atlanta Streets Alive [1]. There is also a BeltLine project to connect the city for pedestrians and bikes plus they have festivals along it from time to time. Its built from an old railroad line [2]. Even though our public transportation isn't robust if you live close like I do its easy to get downtown on the train.

[1] http://www.atlantastreetsalive.com [2] http://beltline.org/about/the-atlanta-beltline-project/atlan...

Streets alive moves around the city, not just on peachtree. Really cool project in my opinion.

Houston does this every year in the Fall; we close a street or two off to cars for a few hours one Sunday a month. There are food trucks and vendors and from personal experience I'd say attendance is moderate at one or two thousand, not tens of thousands a street festival will enjoy.

If a car-crazy town like Houston can do it surely Paris with their amazing metro could do so much better. Considering the effect a single day of no cars has on their air quality and the allegation that diesel cars are much more polluting and fuel consuming than previously thought, perhaps Paris will moot electric only cars in the core?

Houston's Streets.

    October 4 -- Washington Avenue, 12 to 4 p.m., Washington Ave between Heights Blvd. and Westcott Street
    November 1 -- Museum Park, 12 to 4 p.m., Caroline between Binz and Wentworth and Binz between Caroline and Chenevert
    December 13 -- Midtown, 12 to 4 p.m., Smith between Elgin and West Gray and West Gray between Smith and Valentine

Never having been to Paris, I am surprised that it doesn't seem to have a car-free inner city anyway (correct me if I'm wrong). I find this one day already a great idea, but why not make it permanent? Almost ever city here in Germany has what we call the "Fußgängerzone" - pedestrians-only zone - in the town center. It makes for a very pleasant atmosphere when you don't have to watch out for cars all the time, and that part of town looks a lot more attractive for it. (Often you will find this area is located in the oldest part of town, so you get to admire all the old buildings even better.)

There are some pedestrians-only areas in Paris : http://en.parisinfo.com/discovering-paris/themed-guides/pari...

Paris does have Fußgängerzonen as well (around Les Halles for example, in La Defance, Latin Quarter ...) but this is a huge city. Only Berlin comes close, and there are cars all around Potsdamer Platz, Brandenburger Tor, Ku'Damm ... But I agree, Paris would clearly benefit from a no car zone from Rivoli to maybe Luxemburg. The roads are too small for serious car traffic anyway.

"... Paris is a huge city. Only Berlin comes close, ..."

yeah, right

Paris: 2,241,346 (2014)

Berlin: 3,562,166 (2014)

Population by administrative area is irrelevant.

"Comparing urban areas in the European Union, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the EU, places Paris (6.5 million people) second behind London (8 million) and ahead of Berlin (3.5 million), based on the 2012 populations of what Eurostat calls "urban audit core cities"." — Wikipedia.

Exactly. The City of London is administratively a city and a county. Looking at these boundaries, it is the smallest English city [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London#Geography

That City (big C, the administrative area) is indeed tiny, population 8,000, and is distinct from the geographical city of London (small c) population 8,000,000.

And, notably, predates the English monarchy and technically exists somewhat separate from the UK...

That's somewhat different, though. The City of London is not London, the capital city of the UK. The latter is formally Greater London, consisting of 32 London Boroughs and the City of London. The two are different administrative entities entirely, with City of London e.g. having its own Lord Mayor separate from the Mayor of London, and with the ceremonial country of Greater London explicitly excluding City of London.

Nested administrative boundaries is a UK speciality (e.g. England, Wales and Scotland are countries within a country).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/42/British...

The 'City of London' is a quirk it is actually a very small borough within the city of Greater London, which has a population of something like 8 million and is very roughly up to zone 6 on a tube map. For the regional population I vaguely remember a statistic that there are 20 million people within 30 miles of trafalgar square, but I can't back this up right now.

And Boston has only 600k inhabitants, right?

(4M if we count the Metro area)

Most of Boston seems doable for car-free too, but I don't know if the public transportation can handle it. It's already taxed at rush hour and other peak times. I can't imagine everybody could get to work on time if everybody had to use it without major skewing of some schedules.

It seems like a strong telecommuting infrastructure and culture should be a part of this.

Public transit in Boston is already choked at rush hour, and badly in need of repairs (including complete fleet replacements for two subway lines, now scheduled to start in a couple of years) -- witness the total breakdowns last winter, which had some lines out of service for weeks.

And witness the repercussions. On the third day of the crisis, the Red and Orange lines were out, and a lot of people who normally came on them, drove instead. The result was that Cambridge was utterly crippled with traffic. On my way back from Kendall to Medford, I walked, and I got home earlier than anyone I know.

Right! And DC has only 658,893 inhabitants. Let's ignore its metro area of 4.5 million and CSA of 9 million.

You will notice that you have left Berlin by all the trees and fields around you. You will notice leaving Paris by the huge motorway you have to cross before you enter the surrounding urban districts.

Berlin is much much larger than Paris in terms of area. I'm obviously speaking of the inner Paris, not Paris + neighborhoods outside of the circular highway (périphérique).

I think this is much bigger than most pedestrian zones in German city centers (I live in Berlin and can't think off the top of my head of a large pedestrian zone, although I know Munich and Vienna have them).

I suppose it depends on your perspective. If you permit cars to drive on 1km of road, that's short, but if you prohibit cars from 1km, maybe that kilometer is long.

The biggest one in Munich is two intersecting streets, each almost 1km long if you measure generously, and some 50-200m stretches of neighbouring streets.

By property value the area is vast ;)

Yeah, it's really strange. All other medium to large German cities have sizeable commercial pedestrian zones, but Berlin has very few. The only ones I know inside Berlin are the shopping street Wilmersdorferstraße in Charlottenburg and the area from Alexanderplatz to Rathausstraße. There's also the Alt Spandau pedestrian zone as well as parts of Alt Tegel, but I don't think those belong to Berlin proper.

Ok, thanks for the corrections, everyone ;-)

A small shortcut in this article that I can't help to point out:

> The Volkswagen scandal over emissions-rigging has increased pressure on the French government to act on car pollution.

The current mayor of Paris has been taking actions like this one since she was instated. We regularly have to deal with "50 km/h max speed" measures and it has nothing to do with the VW rigging scandal.

Small sidenote:

> In the rest of the city, cars were allowed but at 20km an hour.

I'm not sure this is true, but I assure to you no one was driving 20 km/h in my neighbourhood.

All in all this was a great opportunity to see the streets of Paris without any cars whatsoever.

The most annoying this about those speeds, is that a car is far more efficient at 50km/h, than at 20km/h.

I suspect the point is to make it pointless to drive, when you can cycle at that speed anyway.

Except you are lucky if you can get even to 20 km/h in Paris, forget about 50 km/h. "Fluid traffic" is a red herring in such circumstances - those other cars always get in the way ;)

Also far more deadly.

The closed system of the car is more efficient. It's not clear that allowing cars to travel at speeds that makes it impossible for them to share roads with pedestrians is globally efficient. Really, allowing cars at all is a concession to global efficiency. In that light, one can see the benefit to abridging driver's generally assumed right to utterly dominate any place they aren't completely prohibited.

I was in Paris this weekend; it was great to be able to participate in this project.

It was pleasant on multiple levels - the lack of traffic, absolutely, but also the sense of community and sense of belonging. There's definitely a feeling of 'taking back' your city when you can circulate freely.

One of the most interesting aspects was that the road tunnels were also open. Paris has quite a few tunnel systems in the center of town, and most of these were available to stroll through, proving a unique insight into what is an oft-overlooked part of the city.

That, and the ability to run / ride / skate through the system, made for a fun day. It's definitely something other cities could adapt

I was in Paris from Fri-Sun, and the difference between having cars and not having cars in the city centre was incredible. I've been to Paris a few times before, but the calm, lack of noise and general feeling of pedestrians was incredible. More cities should take the lead from Paris/Germany/etc. and reduce the number of vehicles in city centres.

Would not having cars in the small centre actually clear up smog in a couple of hours? I would suspect that changes in weather (wind/rain) would have a far greater impact on air pollution. Along with the notes of happy people, I'd imagine this is more a psychological effect. Cities do seem pretty neat without cars (judging from when I've been out during crises and there's been no other traffic).

Also: "emboldened to cycle in from the eastern edge of the city without a helmet" - I'm not sure, but are cars a massively dominating factor in bicycle safety? I'd imagine there's still risks, like hitting someone, or a curb, where a helmet might come in life-saving.

There is a lot of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet.

Second, countries which have made the helmet mandatory have seen a decrease of cyclism and an increase of obesity and heart diseases, to the point that it increases the global mortality [2].

This may sound very disturbing if you come from a country where helmets are mandatory. In France, they are not.

In case you wonder, there are also stories (albeit probably less than unanimous) that cycling at the red light is safer. It is my personal belief that I'd never go ahead when it's green for the cars in my city (Lyon), but it's much more controversial. Some cities (like Paris[3] allow jumping the red light).

Finally, many European countries, including London and Paris, have developed bike stations (take a bike, 1.50€ for a 24hrs card, with deposit). Making helmets mandatory would be a problem.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/1999/jun/15/healthan... [2] http://www.cycle-helmets.com/helmet_statistics.html [3] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33773868

>In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet.

Do more or less than 80% of cyclists wear a helmet? That stat is worthless without qualification (in my experience the vast majority of people in Australia wear helmets, especially when cycling on the road).

Not that I disagree with your general point; for the moment I am undecided.

It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury. I just wanted to point out that there is controversy, I don't however have the definitive answer about red lights and helmets.

It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury.

Yes, being humans, they would.

It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury

Because it's compulsory to wear helmets.

If 95% of cyclists wear helmets (that would be my guess, at least when cycling on the road) and only 80% of fatalities happen with a helmet then it would seem to me that helmets are very effective - which is why you need to qualify the statistic.

> Second, countries which have made the helmet mandatory have seen a decrease of cyclism and an increase of obesity and heart diseases, to the point that it increases the global mortality.

Sorry, but I have a hard time beleiving this.

Please note that this article from The Guardian is 14 years old, and doesn't link to any source.

That's ok, scientific analysis of the impact of mandatory helmets has been done demonstrating that it would increase mortality rates. http://www.cycle-helmets.com/england_helmets.html

so... I just scanned that, and apparently the thesis is that most people would rather not ride a bike at all if it involves, you know, looking like the sort of person who wears a helmet.

Wow. uh, that plays into all my negative stereotypes about "normal people."

I mean, it's your head, and I think you should be able to decide for yourself what an acceptable level of risk is, but don't pretend that a good helmet won't help make injuries in a crash less severe.

That's a personal choice and you are mixing the sport of cycling with the activity of biking from A to B. In the Netherlands (massive biking culture) 96% of people do not wear helmets yet they have the least head trauma in the world. For biking, you create segregated space.

Quite a lot of the Netherlands doesn't have segregated space.

What they do have is reduced space for cars and absolute priority for cyclists when cyclists and cars share road space.

It's not possible to remove cyclists from all roads, so it's probably more important to change car driving culture.

That's an idiotic stat. I bet 100% of the cyclist die in wrecks that occurred while they were breathing as well. Does that mean that they shouldn't breath?

> There is a lot of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet.

The problem is that most people think helmet is there to safe lives. It is not. It is there to protect you from head injuries.

If you are in a bike accident, you are more likely to be seriously injured from other damaged such a broken leg or serious bruising to the torso. I wear a helmet when commuting to work, but I have my doubts if it will save my life if have a big accident with a car.

What a loads of bollocks. I've been personally in the incident where not having a helmet would have a high probability of me dying on spot, or at least have a massive frontal fracture of my skull in forehead, with god knows what consequences.

I've flown head-first over the bike, fallen head-first too, have a 5-10 second memory loss of the details from the head impact, but when coming back together, big spiky rock was sticking out of the ground in front of my eyes, touching my helmet on my forehead.

Had a bruise in my forehead for a long time (from inside of helmet), some sort of sun shield on helmet went off, but if I didn't buy my first ever bike helmet couple of weeks before that accident, I am damn sure my life wouldn't be the same, and probably not at all anymore. I was shellshock-like for quite a while after that.

You don't want to wear helmet? Sure, just in case of incident and head trauma, you'll pay all the medical bills for your head treatment, if you actually survive. And if you don't buy a helmet for your kids, social services on you (how the heck did I survive my childhood without it is still a mystery to me)

Your case is literally the only case helmets are tested for.

Helmets are tested, from a standing height, falling forwards at no higher speeds than 7mp/h (this is the UK safety requirement).

to me, that sounds like a pedestrian helmet.

I'm glad that your helmet saved your life, but there is a very simple fact that it's not anywhere close to the safety people expect from helmets- and additionally, people who are forced to use protective gear are likely to give up cycling in the first place.

I know personally, if I'm cycling for 40 minutes with a helmet (on a hot summers day)- or I can take the car.. I'd take the car.

without a helmet, the trip would be enjoyable on a bike.

Almost nobody in The Netherlands cycles with a helmet. There's been various studies that cars are not as careful with cyclists when cyclists wear a helmet.

You're talking about one example where this helmet would've saved you. However, requiring helmets would mean a massive decrease in cycling. Further, the studies that a cyclist seems safer with a helmet, so more risk is taken by others in traffic.

> You don't want to wear helmet? Sure, just in case of incident and head trauma,

Why be all dramatic about this? Millions of people cycle without a helmet, including kids. It's nice to be over protective but society is actually worse off. Helmets are more common on racing bikes of course.

It's better to have separate clearly marked cycling paths, make cars responsible (basically: car responsible for anything more fragile than them, same for a cyclist), etc.

Again, you hardly see anyone with a helmet in The Netherlands. Though strangely, in Denmark everyone seems to use it. Number of cyclist related injuries is pretty small.

I forgot to mention Badinter's law (since 1985, France) [1].

Among a general review of insurance code, it says a car is always guilty when involved in an accident with a cyclist or a pedestrian.

It's a different legislation than anglosaxon countries, which consider that cyclists and car drivers have equal rights.

[1] http://www.adjcourtage.fr/LoiBadinter.html

I've recently moved to Copenhagen, and have seen very few people using helmets -- perhaps 1-2%.

(Plus people going very fast on racing bikes, who also wear helmets in NL.)

The 80% figure is useless without knowing the proportion of people cycling without a helmet: if 99% of cyclists use a helmet then that would be a an odds-ratio of 24.75, which would be huge (by comparison, most "big" public health effects which aren't smoking-related are around 5-10).

My own personal experience would suggest that it is quite a bit higher than 80%.

Hat tip to this link http://road.cc/content/forum/165819-whats-wrong-bicycle-helm... but let me quote a comment from there:

Just to save everyone else the time and effort as well as repetitive strain injury I am going to summarise the entire crux of how these responses will go:

Someone will kick off with an anecdote about how they or a friend's life was supposedly saved by wearing a helmet.

This will be followed by a post saying it isn't much use wearing one when getting driven over by a HGV.

Someone else will then link to the University of Bath research.

Following again with another anecdote where a helmet was ineffective or lead to more injury.

Now someone is going to come and call everyone else morons and telling the other posters to stop pressing for mandatory helmet wearing- despite the fact no one has done so.

Someone else will now make an observation about why car drivers or pedestrians don't have to wear them.

Mr "Stop-making -me-wear-a-helmet-despite-no one -actually-calling-for-it-to-be-law" will then quote the Australian experience before again insulting those imaginary posters no one else can see who want to make it illegal to ride without a helmet.

Someone who hasn't read the previous comments will again post a link to the University of Bath research.

A sensible post will then mention Chris Boardman but this will be ignored as the pro and anti-helmet debate hots up.

Someone makes a reference to "noddy hats".

Someone makes another sensible statement about not forcing anyone to wear one, that it should be personal choice and they choose to wear one. That will then be ignored as the rest of the posters get nasty and call into question each others moral and intellectual standing, again despite NO ONE ARGUING IT SHOULD BE COMPULSORY.

Another person again posts about making pedestrians wear helmets.

These same comments will then be repeated ad nasueum until suddenly there are hundred of posts all saying the same thing and mirroring the exact same helmet threads that seemingly appear every few days which no one then reads because once you have read one, you have read them all.

Rats didn't get this in fast enough. Look at the explosion of helmet debate comments below :O

Comment of the year.

It's astounding how similarly we humans think alike, or how readily we seek an unspoken opinion to state for the sake of imaginary Internet points.

You’re forgetting the ‘Someone’ who will remark that road design plays an important role.

Relevant links from the past week that compare two approaches:

https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/come-an...

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/the-f325-fast-...

IMO, almost all cycling accidents are avoidable, also those where the fault is with others (pedestrian, cyclist or car driver) you have no control over.

Problem is, to do that, you need to pay attention whenever there is potential for danger. Good cycling infrastructure decreases the fraction of the time that that potential is present from close to 100% (for example, if you are riding a 1m cycle lane next to a row of parked cars, you _must_ look forward to check whether there are drivers in those cars that might open a door into the cycle lane, and stay in that 1m wide lane, and check for cars making a turn into your lane) down to 10% or so. That makes it a lot safer to ride when you aren’t in the physical and/or mental state to pay attention 100% of the time (which is almost always)

Oh, and “Chris Boardman”. I like making sensible posts, and accept that ‘being ignored’ sometimes is the price for it.

You forgot someone noting that since the statistic is for Australians they were most likely falling from their bikes into a pit of venomous wildlife anyway.

There's some data that says cars give people without helmets more space than those with them.

The 80% number is useless. The first thing to do is to remove deaths where there was no trauma to the head or damage to the helmet, then you have a more fair comparison. I am certain that helmet do save lives, question is how many of the deaths would have been preventable by wearing a helmet. I don't think all the ER nurses and doctors are biased to such an extend that they are 100% wrong, when saying they see plenty of examples where a supposedly "No protection helmet" actually made a difference.

I have yet to see anything other than broad statements and useless repetition of statistics the author fails to understand properly. Btw, from you second link

> The Committee is appreciative of the fact that bicycle helmets, that meet national standards and are correctly fitted, provide some protection against head, brain, and facial injuries and is therefore of the view that the use of helmets should be encouraged.

Removing non-helmet related deaths fails to take account for any changes in attitude from helmet wearing. Could it be that little hunk of plastic makes people feel safer and thus helps lead to a small increase in the number of accidents?

It's entirly possible that's bullcrap but it's the kind of thing that's missed if you're only compare head related injuries.

This doesn't make any sense, mostly because no one reports crashes that did not result in cyclist death because they wore a helmet. I fell of my bike going 30mph and hit the curb head first - the helmet split in half(which is exactly what it's supposed to do) and I was absolutely fine. If I wasn't wearing it, I wouldn't be writing it - I would be dead. But I never reported my "life saving accident" anywhere,and I'm sure millions of people never report theirs either. While I wouldn't want to make helmets mandatory, I would certainly like to ban headphones while riding bicycles - it's so dangerous not knowing what's behind you based on sound that I literally can't understand how people can be so careless.

No, the helmet is not supposed to split in half. It is supposed to crush, absorbing the impact's energy.

And you would most likely not suffer serious question injury from such a fall. The horizontal speed is not so important if you hit your head on a flat surface. The vertical speed is essentially the same as if you've fainted standing still.

by curb he probably meant the edge of the curb in which case the helmet splitting in half makes sense, and also that probably would have done quite a bit of damage without a helmet

Image of my helmet after the crash [1]. Hospital cleared me the same day, with couple stitches. Surgeon said if not for helmet I would be gone.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/QBg0b0V.jpg

There is a lot of this post-hoc analysis, the main line of thought being that if the helmet broke then maybe your head would've been the one to break instead had it not been for the helmet.

This is completely false and not based on any science. Bicycle helmets are meant to crush, not to break. When they break, they absorb very little of the impact's energy.

The helmet shattered. In other words it failed. No significant amount of energy was absorbed.

There was blood so it didn't even protect you from abrasions. A construction type hard hat would of provided more protection.

If the helmet shattered, then a significant amount of energy was absorbed. Otherwise it wouldn't have shattered.

The propagation of cracks results in a very minimal amount of energy absorption.

>First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1].

At this point I am not sure. The problem seems to be that current designs are based on ancient studies of how much acceleration it takes to cause skull fracture. It turns out that it is extremely unlikely that you will get a skull fracture while riding a bike. The energy justisn't there. Hence, current bike helmets are pretty much useless for preventing brain injury. The energy absorbing foam is too stiff to crush in actual accidents so no energy is absorbed.

Concussion on the other hand does happen a lot in bike accidents and is now known to be a fairly dangerous injury. That has caused a current idea that it might be worthwhile to design a helmet that works against the lower acceleration that causes concussion and doesn't work against skull fracture. Unfortunately such a helmet would not meet current safety standards and as a result could not be a commercial success.

>Also: "emboldened to cycle in from the eastern edge of the city without a helmet" - I'm not sure, but are cars a massively dominating factor in bicycle safety? I'd imagine there's still risks, like hitting someone, or a curb, where a helmet might come in life-saving.

There are still risks, but serious cycling injuries and deaths are massively dominated by bycycle-car interactions. Theory being that on a bike... I'm usually going under 20mph, So the force involved in a single-vehicle crash is whatever energy that 20mph imparts to my 200lbs of flesh, rubber, carbon and aluminum. Yeah, it can kill you, but usually doesn't.

If you are hit by a car, first, the thing is quite often going faster than 20mph, and the mass involved is at least one order of magnitude greater. That's a lot more energy to dissipate into the soft and crunchy cyclist.

cars make the roads very dangerous for anyone not in a car.

All that said, I personally wear a full-face helmet on my commute, even though nearly all of it is on a nearly empty mixed-use path that prohibits cars. Yes, without cars, helmet or no, I'm a lot less likely to die. But even if the energy involved is all my own, I'd much rather crash while wering a serious helmet than with a bare head.

I use a bell super 2r mips, and I keep the chinbar on. I've already had one accident (as a child, colliding with another bicycle) where I landed on my helmet and my front teeth. Fortunately for me, I kind of had a bugs bunny thing going, and so the Dentist just evened out the jagged bits of my front teeth, and my mouth probably ended up looking better for it, but yeah, I'd rather not repeat that.

I don't think the chinbar is likely to save my life; the jaw provides a reasonable crumple-zone to protect the brain if the jaw hits first, but the chinbar will save me, in case of a crash where I land on my chin, a whole lot of pain, medical expense, and possibly missed work.

My general attitude is that a helmet isn't that big of a deal to wear, and it significantly decreases the seriousness of injuries I might receive while cycling. Further, if I am going to bother to wear the helmet (most of the cost is in the inconvenience of carrying it, for me. For most people, there's a cost in terms of style, but I'm wearing cargo shorts already.) I don't see any reason to buy any but the most protective helmet that I can get that doesn't interfere with my cycling (for example, it needs adequate ventilation; thus you don't see me busting out my arai) - You can get a real top-end bicycle helmet for two hundred bucks; Considering what medical care costs, one crash is gonna pay for a lifetime of really nice helmets.

To be clear, this is what I do to protect my head, (and my face) - I don't mean to tell other people what they should do with their head.

Regarding the speed at which cars hit cyclists, a lot of accident happen when a driver is exiting a connecting road, or making a turn, they are generally going less than 20mph in those situations.

There are a lot of low-speed minor accidents with minimal injuries, sure. There are probably more of those than serious accidents with serious injuries.

However, I don't see how that challenges my assertion that cars make roads more dangerous for everyone who is not in a car. Am I missing something?

All biking accidents that I've heard of involve cars.

In the city, the most dangerous things are driving next to parked cars (people open doors without looking) and crowded intersections (cars turn without looking).

On the country side, the most dangerous thing are cars passing cyclists without sufficient distance. Drivers are really bad at estimating the distance of their side mirror to cyclists.

Anyway, that's anectotal evidence from the handful of serious accidents that people I know had. Personally I've been lucky so far.

>In the city, the most dangerous things are driving next to parked cars (people open doors without looking) and crowded intersections (cars turn without looking).

fucking hell, I remember I was cycling to the gym in London.. CS2 on whitechapel road going west from Bow to Queen Mary university (uni gym) and as I'm cycling, in the cycle lane, with my lights on.. some lads open the rear door of their Mercedes just in time for me to crash into the edge of it.

traffic was stalled so it's not like just he was stopped.. that hurt.. please look when you open your doors drivers.

I used to work with someone in London who was on a motorcycle just as a cabbie opened his door right into the road right in front of him. According to witnesses (he has no recollection of this himself), he flew over the door, went head first into the road, stood up and started yelling abuse at the cabbie, and then promptly fell unconscious and collapsed. He got away without any serious injury thankfully.

Cycles are scary enough for me here - I don't know how anyone dare ride motorcycles in London.

Yeah, as a new driver I don't get why people don't do this - it is not even difficult, as the car has mirrors.

I agree that doors of parked cars in cities may be a frequent and painful source of cycling accidents. They are not, however, the most dangerous.

The most dangerous source of accidents for cyclists in cities is from passing turning HGVs (trucks) on the inside. The majority of cycling fatalities in London are caused this way every year.

Fortunately these accidents are avoidable through education of both cyclists and drivers, which is more important than wearing a helmet.

Cars are a massively dominating factor in every traffic safety situation.

The number of deaths from bicycle and pedestrian collisions (so, any collision not involving a ton of metal) is on the order of a single death every few years, and it generally involves people that (for lack of a better description) are at a point in life where any injury, just a fall, is very much life-threatening.

The key to reducing traffic deaths is to not have multi-ton cars with power in excess of 50kW crash into squishy humans. There is no amount of polystyrene in the world to diminish the forces involved here.

As a cyclist in Paris, yes, I'd say the presence (and domination) of cars is a BIG reason I feel less safe. I have friends from other cities who grew up biking but who don't dare get on one the excellent bikeshare Vélib bikes to get around because they're afraid of being hit. But cars are just one piece in the puzzle; I think what's worse is the psychological atmosphere: the stress, the having to always be on the lookout and, oddly, the lack of civility.

I've approached trucks and cars parked on the bike lane to ask them if they could move just a little to the so bikes don't have to swerve around them and enter the flow of car traffic. I do so politely, making sure to not adopt a defensive/aggressive attitude. In a few rare cases, the driver had been genuinely unaware and apologized and moved. In most cases though, I'm insulted and told, "vous me faites chier !" (something along the lines of "You're pissing me off!"). I was once even told by a genleman on a scooter that, "If you want to ride your bike, why don't you just go to the countryside?"

If you're on a bike, cars, scooters and motorbikes will constantly remind you that you're not welcome. Try explaining to a car that he's parked on the "sas vélo", that little space reserved for bikes in front of traffic lights. Or explaining to cars that when they turn right and through a bike lane, that it's common courtesy to signal the turn (instead of suddenly turning and shouting at bikes for being in their way). It's a problem of education, too.

Cyclists aren't all innocent, either. I've seen people on bikes not stop for pedestrians even when they have right of way. Pedestrians, who are understandably annoyed and probably used to no one looking out for them, also do stupid things like cross when it's red even as they see a bike approaching fast downhill. (This actually happened to me; she apologized when I had to slam my brakes, as did the car behind me. What was odd was that she actually stopped before crossing, saw that the light was red for her and green for cars and bikes, that we were approaching and started crossing anyway. And this isn't an isolated incident, I experience this at least two or three times per week).

So, it's a very unhealthy environment where everybody feels no one respects their rights. But cars are by far the biggest reason Paris feels unsafe (even though it really isn't once you get the hang of it).

I ride without a helmet but recently got a Hövding (the portably bike airbag from Sweden) to test in the city and wrote a review of it[1]. Mine actually went of accidentally, but I thing they're very, very promising. Not least because of how much more effective they are at oblique, non-perpendicular impacts.

[1]: http://www.neustadt.fr/reviews/testing-hovding-invisible-hel...

As a pedestrian in paris I'd say the presence of bicycle is a BIG reason I feel less safe.

Most of the cyclists are unaware of the rules. pass on red and on pedestrian way carelessly. worst ones are the users of the free bikes (mostly tourists who never biked since they left the 90s and listening to nirvana) who are the most dangerous drivers on paris streets.

I'd rather have a city center as it is now than the one i experienced during free car day where it was like the far west with cyclist not respecting any rules and biking between buses and pedestrians

I think you meant "unsafe", and I agree with you. I too am very annoyed when I stop at a pedestrian crossing (or at a red light) only to have the bike behind me zip past me, creating a VERY unsafe situation for people trying to cross. (I sometimes feel I betray pedestrians at crosswalks without red lights when I stop--they thank me, they start crossing, and are almost hit by a passing bike or motorbike that didn't stop! In this case, I have created an unsafe situation... in a weird way).

I think a lot of people on bikes disrespect pedestrians. I find it reflects very badly on cyclists who do respect other people with whom they share public space, and on Parisians in general. People have priority, not least because I as a cyclist have a machine to help me move about and pedestrians don't. There's also civility and just being nice to one another in general.

I actually think words like "pedestrian", "cyclist" and "motorist" create unnecessary conflicts of interest between people who live in the same city. Everyone is at some point a pedestrian -- we're pedestrian by nature!

Having said all this, I think people on bikes would be less likely to be as aggressive if cars were less aggressive towards them. (It's a vicious cycle, and in the end nobody wins and everybody is stressed).

I'm actually working on an article on this for the French press, to look at this situation from a UX pov.

> People have priority, not least because I as a cyclist have a machine to help me move about and pedestrians don't.

On the other hand, it's much more demanding for a cyclist to emergency stop (presumably at high gear) and then start again than for a pedestrian. When I'm on foot I try not to make cyclists stop for no good reason when I can just wait a few seconds more.

At low speeds bikes also often have a longer stop distance than cars (especially since they often go faster), which sometimes makes it difficult or impossible to stop in time once you notice that the car on your left is stopping for the pedestrian waiting on the right. It actually happens to me not unfrequently, especially since most often cars will not stop, so it makes no sense to stop every time as a cyclist. I try to apologise to the pedestrians when I'm not able to stop in time, they usually seem more amused or impressed by the skidding than angry at me.

I bike daily to work in New York, and I don't buy the argument that it's that hard to stop. Assuming your bike has gears it's almost no effort to get started again from gear 1. I fully stop at every light. I have very little physical endurance (I can't jog for more than 1 minute without panting), but doing this repeatedly doesn't cause me to even break a sweat. I bike at roughly 10-12 MPH on a heavy bike.

Not yielding for pedestrians is common among bikers here, but very rude and dangerous. I've had a lot of close calls as a pedestrian with bikers blowing through red lights. I wish the police would crack down on it.

> Assuming your bike has gears it's almost no effort to get started again from gear

I specifically mentioned "emergency stop (presumably at high gear)". Unless you have a very sophisticated bike, you can't change gears once stopped.

Obviously I never talked about going through red lights, since for red lights you always have time to switch to a lower gear beforehand, and stopping isn't optional anyway.

> Obviously I never talked about going through red lights, since for red lights you always have time to switch to a lower gear beforehand, and stopping isn't optional anyway.

Sorry, I misunderstood you since this isn't obvious in New York: plenty of bikers don't slow down to go through red lights. They trust that the cars are going slow enough that they'll stop for them -- it's a fairly safe assumption, but very rude.

Personally I walk and cycle a lot in Paris, I don't drive myself but do get Ubers fairly often.

Pedestrians: what's wrong with half the people, it's almost more common to see people walking into each other than stepping around each other, constant lack of what I'd consider in England to be common courtesy when walking near other people on pavements.

Cyclists: what's wrong with half the bikers, they ignore lights, wriggle around cars, go shooting past pedestrians too fast, etc. Actually some cyclists are like that most places I think. Some of us aren't idiots, though.

Drivers: what the fuck, the fuck, is wrong with Parisian drivers. Never seen such bad average driving competency in Europe before. Only slightly less crazy than I've witnessed in China. Doesn't matter whether you drive a smart car, land rover, bus or taxi, it seems if you drive in Paris you are constantly trying to edge ahead of anyone you can, overtake if there's a tiny gap, honk your horn all the time... wow.

My personal experiences: when I'm in a taxi I find poor driving (often of my driver just as much as other vehicles) annoying as hell but only a couple of times a little scary.

As a pedestrian I don't really have issues... if I step into the road I look first, simple.

As a cyclists I'm constantly dealing with cars to my left and people on the pavement to my right, mostly people who are more than happy to take two steps backwards onto a road without looking while stood chatting to friends. And on top of that you have the really dangerous car drivers, of which I've been seriously frightened quite a few times now...

All in all, I get pissed off by idiots in each group, but it's when I'm cycling that it affects me the most by far.

Another perspective: Parisian traffic has a high tolerance of bikes and pedestrians in general. As other readers will attest, some countries are down-right hostile (US, UK, Australia..)

The recent advent of allowing bikes to run through certain red lights is an official acknowledgement of what has happened for a long time.

Personally, the tolerance that the traffic has for the Velib' / Tourist bikes is part of what makes the city welcoming. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.

Not sure about UK being hostile to cyclists. Is it as good as the Netherlands or Denmark? Certainly not. However we do have an extensive cycle network that continues to grow:

http://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map?lat=56.54737192673878&lng...

This is mostly because the pedestrian and bicycle spaces are very badly mixed.

You totally overlook the most disrespectful users of all : pedestrians, they do cross whenever they want or wherever they are, but it is a long held social norm, cyclist are newer here.

Also, it is important to mention the scandalous denial of cars refusing to let bicycles pass in one way streets with both ways authorized to bikes. It is supposed to be authorized by law since 2009 or 2010 in streets with a special roadsigns and most of the time a special corridor. I am constantly fighting with cars who don't respect the corridor, because some car drivers just hates bicycles (especially in this kind of situations where bicycles are authorized to use the one way street and not them).

I was recently in Delft, NL - I saw hundreds of cyclists - only 5 or so with helmets and they were children / in lycra.

Nor gloves. In the UK I always wear both. It is the environment that makes the difference. People in Delft are not going 20mph like I do. They are casually cycling from one part of town to another in their normal clothes.

Cars are absolutely a dominating factor in biker safety. In NYC in 2012 and 2013 there were 7766 injuries and 30 fatalities of bikers reported which involved cars as compared to 537 injuries and 3 fatalities of bikers which did not involve cars.

See page 2 for source: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2012-bicycle-crash... http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2013-bicycle-crash...

I was in Paris this weekend-just-gone and sat on the bench on Sunday on Champs-Élysées watching all these people walking down the road. I thought it had always been like this. Then I saw the police at around 6pm start to ease it up and march in front of the cars to open the roads again and back to normal with cars beeping their horns and nearly hitting cyclists.

Now it completely makes sense why that old French man sat next to me and wouldn't stop talking about the cars and pollution.

After spending lots of time in the Netherlands, where bikes and pedestrians are respected, it was a shock to see the situation in Paris when I was there this week. It felt like a car city. Roads sometimes took up a significant amount of space and the sidewalk was only wide enough for one person. Drivers also had such a lack of respect for bikes and pedestrians. It was at times frightening to try to use a crosswalk, as nobody would stop for the people trying to cross. Paris is much better than the states, but they have a lot of room for improvement.

I think there are some cities in Europe - can't remember if Paris is one - in which road traffic can still cross on a green light for pedestrians, maybe only a left turn and if there is no-one crossing. Of course, "no-one" crossing is then taken with a pinch of salt by bullying drivers. This is definitely not the case in London, although traffic still has a tendency to go through red lights late.

You're thinking about a right turn on a red light, and it's not the case in France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_turn_on_red

Oh yes, for places that drive on the right, that obviously makes more sense! It might not be for the same reason, but I've definitely felt like drivers have 'more priority' over crossing pedestrians when in mainland Europe. Even on a pedestrian green light.

>Even on a pedestrian green light.

Yup - here in Warsaw, that's way more of a give way signal than a stop, thanks to quite often drivers and pedestrians having a green light at the same time!

I have been to Warsaw, and remember some pretty major roads right in the city centre, so it could well be there I'm thinking of - thanks!

I'm not sure what you mean by "a pedestrian green light". I have never seen a pedestrian green light that wasn't accompanied by a red light for cars? Unless maybe you're talking about cars turning left or right at a green light (therefore crossing the path of pedestrians who also have a green light)?

I think drivers reasonably respect pedestrians in such situations at least in France, but for regular crossings, yeah it can be quite difficult, even though pedestrians theoretically have priority. It's usually better in core city centers, especially those cities which have extensive areas with reduced speed, pedestrian areas, etc. Nantes and Lille centers are somewhat comparable, but even in the "shared space with pedestrian priority" in Lille's very center (which is almost entirely allowed to cars), cars try to not stop for pedestrians, while in Nantes which has extensive car-free areas, cars will stop and generally drive more gently in most of the city.

And just over the border from Lille, in Belgium, things are completely different and cars sometimes stop even if you didn't intend on crossing! I don't think there is any homogeneity in "mainland Europe" on this topic.

Yup, I think we're talking about the same thing. Like I said, I couldn't remember exactly where I'd experienced it, having travelled in a lot of mainland Europe. But, as a Brit, it's very disconcerting - here, if the pedestrian crossing has a green light, the cars have a red light, and must not go, no exceptions.

>there are some cities in Europe... in which road traffic can still cross on a green light for pedestrians

Warsaw has Right Turn on Red, which in itself can be fine.

The real fun comes from the frequent Right Turn on GREEN junctions that leads to pedestrian crossings showing green for pedestrians, and on which the law demands drivers to give way to pedestrians.

It's crazy dangerous. Too many car drivers plough through regardless, and huge numbers of people just ignore the possibility that there are terrible drivers out there, leading to them being in the right for crossing, and sadly dead for not having looked before crossing.

The Paris cycling infrastructure is freaking non-efficient. And dangerous. Pedestrian and cycling zone are way too mixed, accidents between the two are very easy. Now, pedestrians hate cyclists and cyclists hate pedestrians. You cannot cycle freely because the cycles paths are a kind of bigger pedestrian path. The only place where you could use the bike in an efficient way are bus paths (also including taxis). It's interesting but not really secure as buses are very disrespectful with bicycles.

The political action is a fail in the case of Paris, because they did it only to say let's see, we did something for you, but they didn't created what would have been a real political answer to give a better space for pedestrians and bicycles in the streets. The streets are owned by the cars, even the amount of space used by parked cars in Paris is scandalous, and they won't change anything about this. They don't want to take the risk of loosing pro-cars electors and it is a pity. People who use bikes try to conquer this space, but it is far too dangerous, and almost nothing is possible once cars speed would be reduced by law and people will be educated about why it is weird to use a car in Paris when you got a so good public transport system.

I don't know if it's the case too in other countries, but here in France, there are more and more cities which go car-free during a day each month.

Most of the time, these car-free events occurs in the historical downtown of big cities, and there are generally appreciated.

Some people complained (on some French newspaper website) about bikes being reckless. Personally, seeing empty boulevards and people walking in all direction is making my heart rate slow down. I'm becoming car anxious...

We're French... If we can't complain about cars, we have to find something else to complain about...

That's limiting, France is also a country with a big poetic history, let's focus on that part :)

I remember car free Sundays when visiting Quito in Ecuador last year, though I think it was only part of the city. Would like to see it take off all around the world, I think it could do a lot of good.

Philadelphia had the roads in center city shut down this weekend for the pope's visit. As someone who has no car, it was glorious! I'd love to see it done on a regular basis, preferably without needing the national guard on every street corner.

I agree. The city felt so much more friendly. And it was quieter, too.

I have lived here for four years. This was by far my favorite weekend ever in Philadelphia.

The feeling of being able to walk around downtown, mingling with thousands of other people, and NEVER having to look over my shoulder make sure that I wasn't about to be crushed by 2 tons of speeding steel was indeed a glorious feeling.

The local businesses suffered, but I'm sure that if the streetscape changed, the "business-scape" would, too.

Here is a map showing (in dark green) the areas where roads were closed for motorized vehicles: https://api-site.paris.fr/images/74176

Car-free days remind me of the car-free Sundays people tell me about from the 1973 oil-crisis. They used to go cycling on the motorways - wouldn't that be fun to do again?

Israel has 1 day per year where there's no car traffic anywhere in the country (yom kipur - no motorized transit of any kind, even trains). It's among some of my fondest memories of childhood, i wish we had something like that in Germany :)

People indeed cycle, roller skate, and skateboard on the highways.

Looks like they made this "speedway without cars" thing in Montreuil (east suburb of Paris) during this event. For the 7th year... Montreuil is a much more progressive city than Paris. http://www.lavoieestlibre.org/#la-voie-est-libre

That would be amazing, motorways are nice and smooth.

Is the high air pollution due to population density or emissions technology (ie Diesel vs Petrol?) For example, I look up the pollution numbers for 2015 in California Bay Area and the strict California PM10 limits were exceeded for only 2 days in the year.* And California is known for being car crazy and we have had hot dry weather for some time now.

* (http://www.baaqmd.gov/about-air-quality/air-quality-summarie...) BTW where do I find something similar for Paris?

The proximity of the sea might be one reason.

Check www.airparif.asso.fr for the numbers !

That would make sense. In California, there is the Central Valley which is far from the ocean but lower population density and the pollution is much worse.

you can find current data at http://www.airparif.asso.fr/en/stations/index

including pm10 measurements

Sorry for the wall of text but this passage from Kundera [1] always comes to mind when I realize (or remember) that noise, somehow, is taken for granted by most people I know: I complain, and they say "stop whining". But it is extraordinary and should not be accepted as a "fact of life". Here's to hope that events like this will make more people aware of that.

“Another visit to Prague after 1989. From a friend’s bookcase I happen to pull out a book by Jaromir John, a Czech novelist of the period between the wars. The book is long forgotten; it is called The Internal-Combustion Monster, and I read it for the first time that day. Written around 1932, it tells a story set about ten years earlier, during the first years of the Czechoslovak Republic that was proclaimed in 1918. A Mr. Engelbert, a forestry official in the old regime of the Hapsburg monarchy, moves to Prague to live out his retirement years; but coming up against the aggressive modernity of the young state, he has one disappointment after another. A highly familiar situation. One “aspect, though, is brand new: for Mr. Engelbert the horror of this modern world, the curse, is not the power of money or the arrogance of the arrivistes, it is the noise; and not the age-old noise of a thunderstorm or a hammer, but the new noise of engines, especially of automobiles and motorcycles, the explosive “internal-combustion monsters.”

Poor Mr. Engelbert: first he settles in a house in a residential neighborhood; there cars are his first introduction to the evil that will turn his life into an unending flight. He moves to another neighborhood, pleased to see that cars are forbidden entry to his street. Unaware that the prohibition is only temporary, he is exasperated at night when he hears the “internal-combustion monsters” roaring again beneath his window. From then on he never goes to bed without cotton in his ears, realizing that “sleeping is the most basic human desire and that death caused by the impossibility of sleep must be the worst death there is.” He goes to seek silence in country inns (in vain), in provincial cities in the houses of onetime colleagues (in vain), and ends up spending his nights in trains, which “, with their gentle archaic noise, provide him with a slumber that is relatively peaceful in his life as a beleaguered man.

When John wrote his novel, Prague had probably one car to every hundred inhabitants or, I don’t know, perhaps to every thousand. It is precisely when it was still rare that the phenomenon of noise (motor noise) stood out in all its astonishing newness. We can deduce a general rule: the existential import of a social phenomenon is most sharply perceptible not as it expands but when it is just beginning, incomparably fainter than it will soon become. Nietzsche remarks that in the sixteenth century nowhere in the world was the Church less corrupt than in Germany and that was the reason the Reformation started precisely there, because the mere “beginnings of corruption were felt to be intolerable.” Bureaucracy in Kafka’s time was an innocent babe compared to today, and yet it was Kafka who revealed its monstrous nature, which since then has become routine and no longer commands anyone’s interest. In the 1960s brilliant philosophers subjected the “consumer society” to a critique that over the years has been so cartoonishly outstripped by reality that we are embarrassed “to refer to it. For we must recall another general rule: reality is utterly unashamed to repeat itself, but confronted with reality’s repetition, thought always ends by falling silent.

In 1920 Mr. Engelbert was still astonished by the noise of the “internal-combustion monsters”; the generations that followed found it natural; after initially horrifying man, sickening him, noise gradually reshaped him; through its omnipresence and its permanence it ultimately instilled in him the need for noise, and with that, a whole different relation to nature, to repose, to joy, to beauty, to music (which, now become an uninterrupted background of sound, has lost its char“acter as art) and even speech (which no longer holds a privileged position in the world of sounds). In the history of existence this was a change so profound, so enduring, that no war or revolution can produce its like; a change whose beginnings Jaromir John modestly noted and described.

I say “modestly” because John was one of those novelists called “minor”; still, great or small, he was a real novelist; he was not just copying truths stitched on the curtain of preinterpretation; he had the Cervantes-like courage to tear the curtain. Let’s take Mr. Engelbert out of the novel and imagine him as a real man who sets about writing his autobiography; no, it is nothing like John’s novel! For, like most of his ilk, Mr. Engelbert is accustomed to judging life according to what can be read on that curtain hanging in front of the world; he knows that the phenomenon of noise, however disagreeable it is for him, does not deserve interest. But freedom, independence, democracy—or, seen from the opposite angle, capitalism, exploitation, inequality—yes, oh a hundred times yes! Now, those are serious notions, they can give a life meaning, render a misfortune “noble! Thus, in his autobiography, which I envision him writing with cotton stuffed in his ears, he grants great significance to the recovered independence of his homeland, and he rails at the selfishness of the arrivistes; as for those “internal-combustion monsters,” he has relegated them to the bottom of the page, a mere mention of a trivial annoyance that, in the end, is rather amusing.

PS: Much like Mr. Engelbert, I resorted to ear plugs, going through all the varieties of it as well as noise canceling headphones. Since about 1.5 years now, I use custom-fitted silicone earplugs and they are amazing. Each ear canal is shaped differently, even "within" the same person from side to side, and a custom fitting makes earplugs most agreeable to wear. I highly recommend this if you suffer from a "too noisy world" like me. They are expensive but the fit and apparent durability make them worth it. One of the best investments in my sanity I've made (so far).

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[1] M. Kundera. The Curtain (Le rideau). Harper Perennial, 2005.

I definitely suffer from noise, for a time I believed I just had 'good hearing', but in actuality I believe that it's just that my brain cannot filter the background noise. Since I do not hear people speaking next to a loud road, but they seem to hear me fine.

There are sounds in the world that are actually painful- I mean, causing real physical pain. I'm referring of course to sirens, and in the UK at least they are dastardly loud. (a requirement to offset engine noise of even the most aggressive motorbike).

I lived for a year on a busy road in london, and, never again, the noise is intolerable.

but; where could you go if you wanted a respite from the droning clunking of engines? the more remote you go, the more engines are required.

England might be too densely populated for you but I'm sure you can find hiking trails in the forests/mountains that do not go near roads? There are definitely plenty of those in Austria and Germany, you need to get to their beginning with a train or car but after half an hour walk you can be somewhere secluded, especially if you go during the work week.

it's about living, not visiting. :\

but yes, I moved to Sweden, the traffic here seems to be much quieter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opn0L-oX3-E

Even London has parks that are big enough that you don't hear noise. Richmond Park is perfect (it even has free-roaming deer), but even Hyde Park is relatively peaceful in the middle.

Amongst the hustle and bustle of London the other day, I walked past a Prius manoeuvring. They're still enough of a rarity in the UK to make this a delightful experience; the complete lack of engine noise, whilst disturbing, is such a welcome contrast. So, be positive - one day, all vehicles will be like this :)

Amsterdam. The quiet is amazing.

IMHO I just think that this retrospective isn't relevant. This measures have not had time to really show what it can do. I just think that the past windy and sunny days made the pollution go away. Not really representative of the result of such actions...

Instead of outright banning all cars, why not ban only the polluting ones, essentially allowing only EVs in cities? That would also accelerate the long-term goal of cleaning up the city of smog, which is what they're trying to do with these "no-car days", because people would dump their polluting cars faster.

If the no-car days don't drive people to dump their cars too fast or at all, then these acts will be just symbolic anyway and won't have much effect on city pollution.

Pollution is only one of a long list of problems caused by cars in cities.

Maybe before too long much of the traffic could be replaced by self driving electric vehicles? The hardest part of traffic to deal with is probably trucks delivering goods and maybe those could be replaced by some unmanned electric things that trundle overnight.

A link that might be of interest [0]. I haven't read the book, but this guy put a lot of thought into what it would take. 0. http://www.carfree.com/

Philadelphia recently did this. Your city can, too. Just bring the pope for a weekend.

When the pope came to Rio de Janeiro recently they actually did the opposite and closed the metro for a week, the mind still boggles at the reasoning.

I wonder what would be the political and economical cost to have such a car-free day at least once in, say, Manhattan. The landscape would probably look a bit alien even :-)

I agree-Manhattan has far too many cars. I think they should shut down 1/2 of the avenues to car traffic a la Amsterdam.

I'd like to see some of streets in the city closed to cars during working hours. I've seen this in England, and it's quite nice.

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem go car free eery Yom Kippur. Driving ends at sunset, and you can feel and smell the difference within the first hour.

L'oligarchie (dont fait partie Anne Hidalgo) continue de prendre le taxi, les riches bobos habitants de Paris peuvent, eux, prendre leur voiture. Les immigrés eux, vont dans le centre de Paris grâce aux transports en commun qui ont été financés par la France entière. Au delà des banlieues parisiennes, la France périphérique, blanche, qui est maintenue en dehors de Paris et sa Banlieue.

To be pedantic, Paris has been car free for most of its history.

Well, the first time in 110 years.

This is the latest political stunt of the hipster left in power that doesn't care one bit for people who actually have things to do during their day, and only cares about tourists and skateboarders who go in circles in the very center of Paris.

Tough luck if you come from far away for work, if you are old or handicapped, if you planned a day in the countryside with your family of four children, etc.

Pollution is much lower when traffic is fluid, and recent road work and legislation have done nothing but help create huge congestions that drive pollution through the roof.

"Pollution is much lower when traffic is fluid" - that's all very nice, but have you been to Paris recently? As in, within the last 50 years? On a usual day (i.e. one without a citywide car restriction), there's no such thing as "fluid traffic" there - you shuffle forward, meter by meter, in a massive traffic jam covering the city.

Also, you are severely underestimating the public transport network - "if you come from far away for work," you have probably left your car at a train station and rode into the city on a RER or a Metro train. Same goes for the other objections, strange as it may seem to USians.

In other words, your arguments seem to hinge on "if Paris were an American type of city, a citywide car ban would suck." Thankfully, it's not one (i.e. driving a car is an option, not a necessity).

I've been living in Paris since 1997, so yes, I know what I'm talking about.

I agree that on a usual day, there are massive traffic jams everywhere. That's because of the relentless resourcefulness with which the leftist mayors have been hindering car transportation in Paris, by constructing countless bus lanes, fake bike lanes, road bumps and other extravaganza. They have artfully managed to completely fuck up Paris traffic.

"Driving a car is an option". We'll see when you are 80 years old and can't take the bus or subway alone. We'll see when you have to move after 1am. We'll see when you are disabled. We'll see when you have to move your children outside the city for sports for instance. Trains are all fine and dandy but they don't go door to door.

Oh and btw: I'm young, single, without child, don't own a car and cycle everywhere. I'm just pissed off by all that hipster bullshit.

Last thing: when actual real solutions to traffic problems such as Uber Pop arise, they are crushed by the government. See the hypocrisy now ?

"I agree that on a usual day, there are massive traffic jams everywhere."

So, how much of Paris should be leveled to widen roadways?

Do you want to see what a city looks like where there aren't massive traffic jams everywhere? Visit Pensacola or Tampa Bay in Florida. Driving is easy. Nothing else is.

Roadways don't have to be widened. Just not continually shrinked like they've been for the last 10 years. Traffic is noticeably worse now than 5 years ago, and much worse than 10 years ago, while the population size hasn't grown as much.

"Tough luck if you come from far away for work,"

If you come from far away for work, in Paris, you're using the RER trains.

"if you are old "

If you are old, maybe you should not be driving. Some of us would prefer not to have to dodge geezers driving land yachts.

"or handicapped"

The ban does not apply to mobility scooters.

"if you planned a day in the countryside with your family of four children, etc."

Take the RER. Pas de problem, monsieur.

Have you tried taking the RER with your four young children ? I'm not saying it's not doable, I'm saying it's not desirable. And I'm not even talking about babies or luggages.

Also the RER doesn't go door to door, and only goes so far.

I have two, and already I find it far easier to pile them on the train than it is to strap them in for a long drive.

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