Paris Will Become ‘100% Cyclable’
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
As someone who bikes a lot in Manhattan and Brooklyn, it really felt like bikes were much a first class citizen in Paris.
[1] https://nacto.org/publication/urban-bikeway-design-guide/bik....
Instead they keep building more and more two-lane cycle paths on either side of one-way streets, fully segregating bicycle traffic from motor traffic. While they surely believe that makes it even safer for cyclists, in my opinion it is a terrible (and less safe) design for multiple reasons.
Firstly, it continues to encourage the idea that cyclists are second-class parts of urban traffic, who may use the streets when by the benevolent grace of the Barcelona local authority they have been provided with their own mini-street on certain grown-up car streets.
Secondly, having to divide the dedicated bicycle space in two, one for each direction of traffic, increases the risk of bike collisions and makes overtaking slow cyclists more of a hassle.
Thirdly, it often makes cycling from A to B harder than driving if your route happens to follow the "standard" direction of the one way street and you need to make a turn to the side opposite the side where the cycle lane happens to be. This forces you to cross the ordinary one-way motor traffic lane, which you wish you were using in the first place, with the added difficulty that the cars are coming to you from behind.
Finally, it really messes up with the crucial factor of predictability in road safety. So many dual-lane cycle paths on arbitrary sides of one-way streets make each intersection have its own personality, and you'd better hope the drivers you'll encounter are locals who know to expect surprise bicycles sprouting out in the opposite direction on their right-hand side. While one could argue that contraflow lanes also mess with predictability they do not, for the simple fact that traffic continues to follow the standard logic of circulating on the right of the road.
From my experience, segregating biking lanes, and having more than one so as to allow passing is a definite plus. Bike collisions can be scary, but it's cars I'm really afraid of.
FWIW, I cycle all the time, often in Paris, Montreal and Barcelona and have strong preferences for doing so in that particular order.
[1] https://bigthink.com/the-present/want-less-car-accidents-get...
I think lack of certainty and lack of predictability are very different concepts, and you want the former but not the latter.
Lack of certainty means you don’t know what’s going to happen because you have blind corners or obstacles (e.g. trees, planters), this requires paying attention and leads to slowdowns because the driver is not confident.
Lack of predictability is its brain-damaged cousin, it’s a drunk driver or a dump truck with an open gate.
I haven't seen roaming mobs of cyclists in other city like NYC, lane splitting through traffic and blocking traffic
Bikes should have dedicated lanes that are always two way.
Vehicles should be the most inconvenienced (one way streets, one turn direction, etc) as “going around” isn’t a major problem.
Designing to minimize interaction between the various forms helps tremendously-if bikes and pedestrians keep interacting negatively it gets harder to get support for more bike infrastructure (even though that’s usually the solution). Just like bollards can keep cars container, steps can help keep bikes contained.
It's easier for you to avoid the car and for the car to get around you.
I wish cyclists did this even for traffic going the same direction as them.
If you are in a street where it's too narrow to safely overtake a bike without them climbing on the sidewalk, then you probably shouldn't be going much faster than the bike anyway...
Montréal is having a mini cycling renaissance as well. Our mayor didn't let the pandemic crisis go to waste and transformed one of the city's main streets by adding two semi-protected bike lanes [2]. The whole area is stunningly different than what it was before. A telling (Canadian newspaper) editorial on the subject: "Is the war against bike lanes finally over?" [3]
Finally, I personally just joined a group of volunteers (as a tech/developer) that are using DALL-E/AI to generate visions of improved streets in the US! If you're curious / want to join (fullstack and especially css developers are always needed), check out https://transformyour.city/ and the twitter account [4]. The goal is to be a "change.org for urban transformation". Feel free to email me as well.
Cyclists/urban idealists unite :-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9lib%27
[2] https://montreal.ca/en/articles/rev-express-bike-network-466...
[3] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-i...
They added wide cycling path all the way to the edge of the city, and there are increasingly aggressive plans to keep cars out of the city. At the same time I see more and more ebikes on the roads.
I'm truly impressed. Things are changing fast.
Investing in cycling infrastructure is a magic bullet to help advance three key policy areas for any society. Public health, overcrowded public transport / congested roads and CO2 reduction.
However, it's really your last point I was thinking of. It's a haphazard city of narrow streets given over to cars. That makes it a hard problem to solve.
As I said, anything is possible with enough will.
My borough of Waltham Forest, at least the parts inside the north circular, has segregated cycle lanes pretty much everywhere. Nextdoor in Haringey, not so much.
It's chaos for just about everything else too, especially when it come to IT. Every council outsources the exact same functions to different companies and almost none of them do it well. It's a collosal waste of resources.
Just as that other Roman town Lutetia. Paris and London are very similar in a lot of respects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
In munich, the city where I grew up in, there's a strong public pressure to create better biking infrastructure. It was put up on popular vote and was the historically best performing yet. But that's not represented in every party and ruling coalitions can be slowed down by forming a coalition with a bike-sceptical party, like the last. But the pressure is growing because there's really no progress yet, it's not possible to evade the issue in the near future.
Is this disconnect present in other countries? I feel like this situation is at least prevalent in quite a few german cities. Which is understandable from a political point of view, to build bike-infrastructure you have to take road away so you will always anger someone and create public opposition.
To ruffle some feathers, yes. And this in the country that always seems to be the first example given: The Netherlands.
Don't get me wrong. Relative to most countries, NL is great for cyclists. Specifically Amsterdam and Utrecht are great for a car-free life, as well as some other cities. Areas close to train stations, connected to any bigger city, tend to do well too.
That's about where it ends. Public transport took humongous hits and roads are being expanded. Why? Because despite everything, car usage is going up and traffic jams are once again increasing. Specifically on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when most people are expected to be at the office. Since public transport is increasingly worsening, most people will simply take the car all the way rather than doing a bit by bicycle and then using the bus/train.
Housing prices make the above even worse (more people have to live outside locations ideal for cycling, PT or a combination), and the government is actively playing into car ownership. I hope I don't need to explain why propping up individual car usage makes building more housing even more problematic (hint: you need to park them, for one).
"But Amsterdam is doing great! But Utrecht is doing great! But I can get from Almere to Amsterdam really easily!" Sure, they are. Now please, overlap Paris, London, or any other big city on top of the Netherlands. Achieving a 100% cyclable Paris is a far bigger achievement than Amsterdam and Utrecht combined. And the writing is on the wall what happens when cars are more affordable and commutes by motorized vehicle are 1 hour a day minimum: car usage continues to go up.
This isn't to be discouraging either. Rather, it's to show that governments can't slack off and take the easy path out. The easy path leads to congested roads, traffic jams, frustrated drivers, mass pollution and a highly inefficient use of ground area.
If I'm not mistaken the goal of 100% cyclable Paris is limited to the city of Paris which has half the area of Amsterdam. AFAIK there's a lot less interest in cyclability in the surrounding areas of Paris and they are somewhat annoyed because a lot of people from there commute to Paris by car.
But twice the population.
> AFAIK there's a lot less interest in cyclability in the surrounding areas
Depends on the city, but the majority are also working on making themselves more cyclable, even when the terrain isn't great for it (western suburbs are quite hilly).
I remember the introduction of velib, throwing lot of new users on the ill adapted roads.then the city fumbling to adapt.
It’s also in grain in the culture at this point.
That city is so dense and small … people got the message that you can be anywhere in 30 min of biking.
Even though I (shamefully) don't know how to ride a bike, I was amazed at how many bikes there were and how bike accessible everything was.
Short & Simple: I never had the need to ride a bike, I never felt like I wanted to (when i was young), and no one ever decided to teach me. I lived on a 13th floor until I was 10, and after moving to the suburbs, I was already so in love in computers I still didn't care for it.
Longer: I was the prototypical shy and introvert nerd, living in his bubble. Early on I developed an eating disorder which made it so I could only eat very specific types of food, which further led me to be in controlled social environments (e.g. I rarely ate "at school" and always ate at home). Couple this with the fact that I was instantly a "computer, maths and science geek" and terrible at sports, there never was a need to ride a bike. I grew up in Coimbra, Portugal, and the city also isn't particularly prepared for bikes. My parents were also very protective of me when I was younger, and neither of them had a bike anymore, so there really was no reason for it.
Longest:
When I was very young I had some illness that prevented me from eating most food for a while. Somehow, after that passed, I developed an eating disorder whereby I was no longer physically and psychologically capable of eating most food. It wasn't the illness from before, it was something within me that would lead me to refuse to eat or to get physically ill at the thought of eating certain foods, like a phobia. I'm pretty sure if you look it up on the DSM it shows up as ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder). To this day (I'm 29) I still struggle with it, although I have slowly managed to improve the situation (add stuff to my diet) to allow me to be in more social situations and accept my quirks (one such example is the fact I'm telling you this here knowing it will be etched on the internet permanently). To give an idea of the magnitude of the thing, most of my diet, up until I was 18, was baby food (and every kind of crappy assortment of chips/candy/crackers you can imagine). You read that right. If you're curious I can share more about that diet, but I doubt you are :)
This condition made me feel very uneasy in certain social moments, like school trips or lunches or even a simple dinner or going to the movies. Since I couldn't eat what other people ate, and what I ate was utterly weird and bizarre, I simply didn't go for fear of being mocked or looked down on.
I was also always the good grades guy wherever I went. I always came top of the class, even in college (where things were already starting to change for the better). This meant that, especially early on, I was always a bit isolated. I don't have any problems making friends or keeping them nowadays, and even then I always found friends and I was bizarrely a very sociable person (not the kind of "shy kid at the back", but the one that "gets out there and rallies against teachers if necessary"). It's just that most of my interests weren't the interests of my peers. I liked maths, coding, philosophy, psychology...and most of my friends and peers had other interests. I'm not saying my interests were better (far from it), they were just different.
All of this, coupled with somewhat protective parents, meant that even though I always had social groups (including family friends), I was never keen on "going out" and "partying", or "going camping". So I never wanted to learn how to ride a bike. There was one time when I was very young and we were on vacation at an aunt's house where I briefly tried for a little bit, and failed. But that was it.
Nowadays, while I am certainly still a "stay at home 99% of the time" kind of guy, I exercise, I like walks, I like hanging out with my friends once in a while. And, yes, I would like to ride a bike because it looks cool and awesome. I have an exercise/static bike at home and would very much like to pedal the real thing. Hopefully very soon I'll accept my friends' offer to teach me how to ride one.
You asked, I answered, sorry for the long reply :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I just really never felt like I wanted to ride a bike until I was embarrassingly old already. The first time I remember _wanting_ to learn was when I was 19!
In Manhattan (which has 4x the population of Paris) you can get an Uber and go a few km in maybe 15-20 minutes. In Paris it’s an hour+. Sure, stealing infrastructure from cars to give to bikes will make biking quicker, but it’s a zero-sun game. You’re basically stealing resources from people who are elderly, disabled, have families, etc. to prioritize bicyclists. Great for some people at the expense of others.
From where to where? That's not my experience at all.
> it’s a zero-sun game
It's not, given that you fit way more people on bikes that you would if they were driving cars.
Public transportation is also meant to be usable by the people you mentioned (especially families), you can debate whether they currently foot the bill, but staying stuck on cars is not the solution.
I am really sick of this "think of the children" argument for why the US needs to persist in this dysfunctional car-centric model, particularly when they're applied to the only part of the country with halfway decent transportation alternatives. I live in lower Manhattan, we need LESS cars and we're going to get it sooner or later. If you don't like that, please stay out of the city, you have practically the entire continent of cities already suited to live your car-centered suburban life.
A friend of mine is a quadruple amputee. He cannot drive, but he can use his motorized wheelchair in bike lanes and travel independently.
The idea is to make the street accessible for all, so everyone can walk around easily everywhere. The bike lanes are there, so that even elderly and kids feel safe to cycle.
Also Paris being gridlocked has been the case since forever.
at the end her dream is for paris to be copenhagen , a city for the rich people living in the center. if they re healthy theyll bike if they re old theyll have a cab or private driver (just like our dear mayor) and of course lets not forget rich tourists who will ride cabs to go by hermes bags.
this is totally disrespectful toward people living in suburbs and having the need to commute by car
Parking is horrendously expensive, and it's not always covered by the employer, especially for people not very high up the ladder (think secretaries and even "higher-up" outsourced personnel).
I can understand wanting to limit cars and push public transit. But boy, do I feel that PT has been on a steady decline for many years. So people get squeezed from both sides. So there's still an absurd number of cars on the road around rush hour.
I can't wait for the new metro lines to open and see how things will change. But I think the main issue is the extreme centralization: every company wants to be in Paris proper or La Defense. There are only so many holes you can dig under a city.
As a bonus, cyclists don't have to stop at stop signs in Seattle, so you can maintain 20 miles an hour easily.
All with none of the feeling of isolation and alienation that a car brings.
I strongly encourage folks to go do a test ride on an electric bike. Absolute game changer.
On the grand scale of things, cyclists, even the lazy e-cyclists, are actually doing their part to contribute to a climate change solution, unlike the extraordinarily lazy and entitled drivers who refuse to modify their lifestyles to actually do something real to reduce their carbon impact.
Even EVs pale in comparison to e-bikes for the actual contribution they make to reducing carbon emissions (especially since half of a car's lifetime emissions comes from its production).
There's also some evidence that when you account for the energy cost of calories from food and its associate carbon emissions that ebikes are actually drastically better than regular bikes in terms of distance traveled per unit energy used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport.... So your degrading language of lazy ebike riders might be completely misaligned with reality. And that's not even considering the possibility that ebikes enable drastically more biking and less driving since they make the choice to bike rather than drive much more palatable for more people and situations. e.g. I can do a full Costco run on my ebike and cart home 50lbs of product no problem. If I only had a regular bike, I'd be drastically more likely to make that shopping trip in a car.
Drivers are the assholes in city life and should entirely submit and yield to cyclists while bowing to thank them for their service for our collective environment. A service drivers themselves are too weak or selfish to participate in.
- Pedestrians are the most vulnerable and should be protected. Also most people are supposedly regularly pedestrians so it seems it would benefit everyone to have them prioritized. They also don't usually form uninterrupted flows like bikes or cars can.
- Then, bikes are very efficient and quite vulnerable.
- Then, I really want public transport to be as smooth as possible and cars should be discouraged (if not forbidden except for specific good reasons), especially the ones that only have one or two people in them, so tramways and bus should always be prioritized.
- Tramways should win against buses, they also don't usually form uninterrupted flows and we want them to be fast.
I believe a really efficient public transport is very important for a working city, and cars are usually the only thing forming continuous streams and are, I think, the only reason we have traffic and traffic lights.
It's amazing how much even a small cargo bike can haul.
Something the same weight as a regular bike with a 250W motor doing the same speed is vastly more efficient.
A LEV with accessory pedals doing double the speed with 2kWh of battery is at best a wash and likely requires 1000s of trips to break even on the embodied energy.
1. When a bike does something stupid and dangerous, I expect them to usually not run into me. When a car does something stupid and dangerous, collision is a very likely possibility.
2. The difference in consequences of collision with one versus the other is drastic.
YMMV, but two plus tons of metal travelling at 100kph driven by someone who can kill without consequences is simply inherently more threatening
E-bikes that go faster than that are, as you suggest, treated like light motorcycles, and require all the same things: license, insurance, registration, and equipment (motorcycle helmet and gloves in the EU) and are explicitly forbidden from riding on bike lanes.
If your vehicle has a throttle and doesn't require pedaling, or the motor provides for speeds above 20-28mph (depending on some factors), then the regulations agree with you.
A bike like the Tern HSD is not legally classified as a motorized vehicle.
That sets a different tone and yet achieves very similar goals.
It is a very dense city with primary schools in every neighbourhood. I am sure most children already walk to school.
A cycle path that is car free is much harder - especially as you get into the elongated roadways of suburbia and car centric towns.
There is a venn diagram with the Strong Towns argument of density and taxable value, the car-agnostic approach of Barcelona or Tokyo and i think the thin sliver of overlap with the modern world looks like car-free paths. A mobility network that is local and human powered and will engender path-side amenities and opportunities to spring up.
Basically, just keeping the current town planning approach, with long car centric roads and amenities and just slapping a cycle path in is not transformative
That implies every house should be connected to a car-free path. I don’t see that as feasible. I would aim for having all houses in 30km/hour zones and requiring any crossings of higher-speed car lanes to be on segregated cycle paths. That’s doable.
Why is dedicating 5% of the space and 2% of the money on doubling tansport capacity unfeasible?
It's just so ... different. the term "block" would stop being so meaningful because that path would break up a block and become ...
But your argument is absolutely on point - i agree. It's just hard to imagine what it will look like :-)
But the alley way type arrangement you're thinking of has existed in the past as well (and probably still exists in some places) with a narrow alley enterable through the back yard that cars only enter if they live on that block.
Additionally it's not really a burden for the cyclist to walk for the first/last km or use the sidewalk at jogging pace where that is legal (so long as the sidewalk road crossings are built with similar levels of safety and pedestrian priority).
There are also many countries that allow children (or sometimes also adults) to ride on the footpath at moderate speed giving way to pedestrians if there is no bike lane.
And how will you know when it’s time to pick them up again because they decided they want to get home?
If you want to know how it's actually done, go visit a school in finland or netherlands.
Kids don’t walk their bike to a cycle path or cycle on the sidewalk to avoid cars, they enter the street in front of their house (likely after riding on the sidewalk for a few meters, even though that’s illegal. Adults do that, too)
That street either has a low speed limit or has separated cycle paths.
But I'm surprised that the article doesn't mention scooters at all (correction - 1 mention in passing). I feel like the bike to e-scooter ratio was around 3:1. They use the same infrastructure and also have significant numbers.
I think the sweet spot is a 50 mile range single person miniscooter (similar to birds, etc), that will be lightweight and foldable and charge quick on 110V. You take that to work, fold it up, charge it whjile you work, use it for lunch/errands, fold it up again, commute home.
The current Birds/etc scooters are juuuust a bit to heavy. I think it's well within the next-gen LFP and sodium ion to produce usable 50 mile scooter that weight 2/3 to 1/2 of a the scooter sharing service designs.
Those should practically be free to any resident of a city in the world in terms of tax rebates or a stipend. I really can't think of a bigger carbon bang for the buck than a 200$ free credit to buy an e-scooter and $1000 for an e-bike+trailer for basic groceries errands.
The portable/foldable e-scooter is a very natural integration with mass transit and intercity as well, while bikes are a lot harder to integrate.
(This applies to cars too: would love to have a battery pack that slides out for the lawnmower/snowblower/chainsaw and then recharges in the car and gives extra miles of range when needed).
There are some shared electrified scooters in Taiwan where you slide in and out battery packs from something like a vending machine.
To swap you just pull up, unhook the old trailer, hook up a precharged one. And it could provide more storage.
This would work especially well for tractor trailers. The power trailer could actively stabilize the truck in crosswind situations, and provide a better aerodynamic profile in the rear.
I've already seen this in power tools though, every company loves to play shitty games with form factors/plugs/etc to lock you into their tool ecosystem. THAT SUCKS. Your battery for you lawnmower should be usable/interfaceable with your bike. Yes form factors and design can demand specific shaping, but I should still be able to use the same plug between similar tool/personal vehicle applications of batteries.
Assuming people would use those - totally! The risk is unfortunately that people just get them because they are free, and in the end are still driving cars for convenience. I guess one would need some system where the credit is earned via actual usage. You pay for it full price, but for ever ridden km you get credit. You already mentioned tax rebates, and those might indeed be a good way. However those already exist in countries for other kinds of commuting - e.g. if I commute by any kind of vehicle in germany I get a 30ct/km tax discount - whether it's a car or scooter. Picking a higher number for a vehicle which is cheaper to own doesn't really sound logical - but maybe just the marketing effect of it would drive adoption.
Also scooters aren't the only compact mobility option. Trifold bikes are about as portable. They also have the ability to emergency brake without tipping you face first into the pavement.
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/e-scooter-injury-rate-los...
Stats are heavily skewed by different demographics (ie. lower experience, more drunk people), so the real effect is probably nowhere as big as the stats indicate, but without specific training emergency braking or hitting a pothole on a scooter is much more dangerous (even more so than a racing bicycle). Electric unicycles and 'hoverboards' are even more dangerous in this regard.
Also having pedals means you can make the battery a lot smaller a the 40-60W needed to overcome drag at 15mph is a relatively trivial input for 99% of people.
I'd still be behind a subsidy for any vehicle that fits some portability critereon (fits on a train, or maybe an additional amount if it fits on a bus) and has strong evidence of longevity, durability and serviceability (so no walmart bikes, nothing that requires an app and no racing bikes that require expensive parts which change every four years), because even the most dangerous folding scooters (including the illegal 50mph ones) or other microtransit pose far less risk to others than a car. I'd also include mandatory documented standards for consumables (wheels, tyres, chains, batteries, motor controllers, gears, bearings etc)
I see a lot of cities that measure bike lanes in total length, which misses the mark in two ways:
1. It often includes lanes that are shared with cars. These shouldn't count except on side streets. Basically anywhere where the speed limit is <25kmh; and
2. Focus needs to be given on contiguous cycling routes. It doesn't matter if you have 1000km of cycle routes if no section is longer than 2km and they're only connected by highways you have to share with cars.
Of course Amsterdam is the gold standard here and it shows how much you can do without necessarily taking up more space (eg the intersection design that puts cyclists in front of cars, which is much safer).
In a city like Paris having physically separate bike lanes will often mean taking away parking spaces or lanes of traffic. That's where the resistance will be.
It is feasible because Paris (the city itself, excluding suburbs) is a very crowded city, where owning a car has always been a luxury. People living in Paris itself who can afford a car, with the associated parking space and everything, are a minority.
People living in the suburbs are more likely to own cars and drive through Paris, but they don't elect the Paris mayor, so their opinion doesn't have much weight.
It is physically impossible to have everyone in many areas of paris drive, because after a parking garage and a fifth of a piece to drive in there's no space left.
Empathy is not forcing those poor suburbanites to spend a third of their income on a car.
Empathy is not taking up 2/3rds of the land in the outer regions with car infrastructure rather than housing and productive commecial uses.
Empathy is not forcing sparse development for the sake of landlords' property values.
You should try it some time.
Also the entire premise that the actually poor suburbanites are all driving into the city every day is absurd. Mosstof them would be paying more for their car and a parking spot than their wage.
fixing trains is not possible when you have to take 3-4 trains to commute… not even talking about people in villages with no trains. a car costs a few thousand euros. you can even get an electric car almost for free if you are on low income. a 1 year train pass costs 800 euros+ and that is if it covers your lines.
you are crazy to believe everyone would bike. again rich and healthy people bike. poor people dont bike, old people dont bike, sick people or people with a handicap dont bike. you are creating a society for the wealthy and the healthy. its what facists wanted to do. this is not empathy. go out of your confort zone go live in a parisian suburb in 93 and see how is the life there when you need to start your day at night and there is no train. go try to ride a bike when your work is a 4 hours drive. paris is one of the densest city in the world i dont know what you talking abt additional housing.
The more I think about it, the more I realize cities don't need cars.
(ok, maybe if you have a city like LA or Houston that is so sprawled out that anything other than cars is impractical... but even with bikes, those cities would create pockets every 5-10 miles... anyway onto my larger point)
At 10mph, you can cover a lot of ground in a city, get your exercise, pay less for car insurance / upkeep / upfront cost and reduce pollution. It's a win-win-win.
Add electric bikes into the mix and you are set to cover maybe 20 miles without breaking a sweat.
Having lived in Holland before, it's such a treat to be able to bike anywhere. And keep in mind that Holland sucks for biking because it rains all the time (Paris might as well, still oceanic climate). Anything with 2,000+ hours of sunshine per year is in an ideal spot for bikes, but that is A LOT of cities in the world.
Anyway, very much hoping that this will lead to more cities following suit.
I used to bike in Paris until my bike got stolen. It got me so furious i stopped.
But a hugely important factor are well designed bike racks. My favorite is the steel loop that comes up from the ground, like a long U.[1] There are tons of variations but the point is to have a solid point to anchor the bike with your lock. In my case I mostly want to save the frame, but a longer chain and I could probably save a wheel. Gotta balance comfort and security too tho
I believe they are called Sheffield Racks.
Japan has very little theft, but it’s cultural and not something you can implement with policy. Maybe widespread bike registration helps?
Worked for them so far, none of their bikes have been stolen.
Some cities do have badge access bike rooms, but you have to subscribe to those.
I just have a rusty 12spd that performs well, U-lock rear wheel within the triangle, minimal chain for the front wheel, and an old bike chain looped on the saddle.
I refuse to deal with bike locking rooms, paid or not. Lock outside and oil frequently and I can lock up precisely at my destination.
The Dutch approach in cities has been to drive something old and or cheap that you can afford to get stolen. It works because the country is pretty flat so you don’t need a fancy light bike with many gears. Paris is pretty flat too.
Lately subscription services like swapfiets have become popular that include maintenance and theft insurance. Through economies of scale, I think it’s competitive with ownership especially for city dwellers without a garage with tools.
I now live in a city with more hills, so I needed a bit more capable bike–I bought a cheap second hand bike with 21 gears. I put some permanantly attached bags on the back which are practical and make the bike look less desireable. I use an axa lock attached to the frame and a separate chain. From day one I accepted it would get stolen at some point—so I feel like I’ve been on a six year lucky streak.
Defeatist? Sure! But I bike without worries.
someone here never tried to climb Montmartre (e.g, there are many steep hills inside and around Paris)
If Atlanta was serious, they'd convert Peachtree (THE Peachtree Street) through downtown and Midtown into a two lane street, remove as many curb cuts as possible (not 100% achievable but probably 90%), and force turns every couple of blocks to ensure there is no through traffic. Peachtree Street is shady and relatively flat, while the wide, highspeed mostly one-way streets that run parallel to it where the bike lanes have been placed are hilly and mostly unshaded. Plus the bike lanes are filled with debris and storm grates. Push most vehicular traffic off Peachtree Street onto those streets instead.
The space gained by making cars and trucks the minority users of Peachtree could be used for multiple bike lanes, pedestrian paths, small linear parks, and perhaps even a low speed lane for those electric scooters that are so popular.
New Urbanism has been pushing this for a long time, walkability is at the core of both high and low density urbanism. An the bicycle is the natural extinction of that.
The corporatization and hijacking of the Seine by commercial ships must end!
1) Stop giving carte blanche to taxis, ride-shares, and scooters. These vehicles are allowed unrestricted access, whether legal or illegal, to bus lanes, which tend to double as bike lanes and the unofficial express lane for scooters. They are aggressive and tend not to follow rules that ensure safety and circulation fluidity. We also have Uber Eats and the like for this shitshow -- so thanks to all of you for making it that much easier to order McDonald's at rush hour.
2) Stop pretending like everyone wants to bike. They don't, and that's OK. Real effort needs to be made to get cars off the road for those who do want to bike every day across the city. That means double down on mass transit so that it is desirable. I really mean that: fix the RATP. Gut it if need be. Leverage it until the mayor has to sell her second property -- I don't care. The metro/RER is a disgusting place fraught with maintenance issues, and certain lines at certain hours are not safe.
3) Change the way Parisian and suburban drivers behave around cyclists, which I really view as tandem to point 2 above. Safety is a major disincentive for would-be cyclists. There are any number of corners with painted bicycle memorial commemorating someone who tragically died on his/her bike. Unfortunately, it is the mentality of drivers that they are the rulers of the road, and I have seen this get worse with the pandemic's wide-reaching effects on mental well-being. But we can either get drivers off the road or force them to conform to basic respect for other commuters, which leads me to the following.
4) Actually enforce traffic laws. Paris police don't enforce much of anything, let alone reckless driving or even speeding. Recently the speed limit in paris went down to 30kph (~20mph). Nobody respects this rule -- indeed some commuting cyclists can even break 30kph on a stretch of boulevard. It is the nature of cars to try to pass a cyclist.
Parisians drive "n'importe comment" because they have to in order to get somewhere. There are simply too many people on the road and too much chaos, and cyclists are certainly part of this problem and then follow suit. I have done this far too many times, though I like to think I'm not harming anyone. Getting cars off the road and doing a better job to create a partnership between commuters to get everyone where they want to be is the missing piece here.
What I'm asking for here is everything -- infrastructure, mindset, enforcement -- to be fixed at once, which is not realistic. Drivers will certainly balk at this news, and they are right -- it's just that they are on the wrong side of history. The more bike lanes that pop up and retract space from automobile lanes will create more congestion unless people are given viable alternatives into the city. I would like to demonize them for having sought a better life outside Paris while the urbanites suffer with the effects of noise and air pollution and difficulty sometimes finding a place to walk. There's also a role for discussing telecommuting as a way of reducing the strain on the city's roadways, which is also an enormous budgetary constraint. A larger transition toward a city for its inhabitants is necessary -- not merely more bike lanes. I want to hear that articulated. Give people a chance to live outside. Paris is not what it used to be and building 100mi of bike lanes won't return it to former glory unless we start thinking more about what makes a city worth living in.
I wouldn’t seriously consider driving to St Pancras either barring a taxi for an early trip.
Note that the removal of the other 50% of traffic would easily shift the road from a traffic jam (Level of Service E or F) to a free-flowing road (LOS C). Even if only a fraction of the overall traffic is removed, traffic would easily get down to LOS D.
This is exactly why encouraging other modes of transportation (cycling, walking, bus, train, etc) actually causes big improvements for all road users.
I probably shouldn't have called it rush hour. The traffic is busy from 7am until 7pm on weekdays.