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.