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Comment by darkamaul | Hacker News Reader

As a daily biker in Paris (and for years), I think it is hard to grasp the changes Paris has seen in the last years.

You now even get to see some congestion on bike lanes (Bd Sebastopol for instance), because they are too many cyclist on an older (and thus too narrow) bike lane.

This change, the new subway lanes, and the reduction of car usage in the city make the city much more enjoyable on a day to day basis, especially for pedestrians as cyclists are less annoying than drivers.

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I've also been a daily cyclist for over 10 years in Paris and paradoxically, I feel less safe now when I'm riding on shared infrastructure (that is roads without a separated cycling lane). I attribute it to the fact that people driving, and especially people who HAVE to drive (taxis, deliveries, etc...) are facing insane levels of congestion and are lashing out on cyclists because they blame them for being stuck in traffic for hours every day.

Now of course as a cyclist, I applaud all this new infrastructure but I'm wondering if there's a way to appease this growing atmosphere of violence (and I'm not exagerating, I've seen several fights break out between motorists and cyclists). Given the very limited space available in Paris centre, I don't really see an easy way unfortunately...

Curious if that's also something you noticed / experienced ?

I guess people aren’t always rational, but do those who blame the cyclists not realize how bad things would be if those cyclists were also in cars?

Previously, some were in cars, but others in public transport.

> Given the very limited space available in Paris centre, I don't really see an easy way unfortunately...

Bicycles take less space than cars, both on road and when parked, don't they? A four-lane bicycle highway is as wide as one-lane car road. If anything, people switching from cars to bicycles should produce more free space for the city, not less.

Am I missing something?

In Paris, most people who are now biking are people who would have taken public transportation before, so the amount of cars on the roads is roughly the same as before.

Do you have a citation for that? Is car ownership and usage for city residents really the same?

Many cars in Paris are driven by people commuting to Paris from outside. There is a real fracture between suburbans (who don't vote for those changes happening in Paris) and city residents who votwd for them.

I don't live there anymore but I grew up in Paris -

I knew absolutely nobody living in Paris driving to another location in Paris. It's always been metro first, bicycle sometime. Almost all of the passenger car you see in Paris are people driving from the suburb.

This is why this whole change was even politically possible.

Many streets have been transformed to one way or made cycle-only so some critical arteries are getting congested a lot. I feel the violence and anger too, you don't even need to go to Paris, the suburbs are becoming a mess of seething drivers. I get a lot more of very dangerous behaviour, insults from drivers on shared infrastructure as I did 5 years ago, even though I have my kids in a cargo and I cycle around the max assisted (25km/h) speed or higher if my legs work, most of the time.

I see shouting matches at least once a week, angry drivers honking on streets they can't even pass a bicycle... And isolated infrastructure is not always possible...

I feel this has become another part of some culture war, where I just don't have a license and drive my kids around in a bicycle (I don't want to drive a car) so I'm some angry green extremist out to annoy every driver out there...

Possibly the dis-ingenuity of vocal posters? The continuing anti-rational love of the most expensive form of entranched transport?

I had the same reaction when bike lines were rolled out over London.

The influx of slower and less inexperienced riders with the (correct) mentality of "I have the right to cycle as slowly as I feel safe to", vs the previous (incorrect, but accepted) mentality of "keep up with traffic or pull over" amongst riders, made my cycle commute less efficient.

But it's better now. People learn, the city adjusts, attitudes change.

We were trying to decide where to live and visiting Paris for Christmas in 2022 was a sheer joy. We ended up in the Netherlands but biking along Rue de Rivoli, the Seine, etc. were a delight for myself and my daughters (we were in a cargo bike) and we hope to return for many visits.

I visited in 2008 and while it was a great city then I definitely wouldn't have been as quick to take kids along for a bike ride.

Were you able to rent a cargo bike in Paris?

Or did you somehow bring one with you?

We rented one from here - https://www.hollandbikes.com/117-velo-transport

One challenge with cargo bikes is transport - They're not allowed on trains (understandably) and carrying one on a car roof is a pretty big undertaking. This guy documented how, though! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UBGT_eE4q0dJZWZrOoBdM80b...

Thanks, will keep that in mind, we use a cargo bike at home, but never considered renting one. A great way to explore a city!

Same here. I'm pleasantly surprised when I try a new itinerary, and now it's mostly bike lanes. Even 5 years ago, it was 50/50 whether there was a proper separated bike lane you could use.

I also remember 20 years ago, when a car was a normal way to move around in Paris. It hasn't been the case for several years for me now.

Around 2019/2020, something important happened: the critical mass for bicycle infrastructure was crossed, and nearly overnight a lot of people started cycling (no doubt helped by 2019 strikes and 2020 covid lanes). Since then, bicycles are a common sight everywhere.

The right bank is going to be really overcrowded this spring, for sure. Left bank have wider roads and less bikes, but right bank is insane.

It's now up to the point that i rather wait for commute hours to be over before i take my bike to that side.

How far outside central Paris does the cycle infra reach? Are the suburbs still very car-centric and/or hostile bicycles?

Good question, and I do not know. However, I suspect that looking at the OpenStreetMap of cycling, there are trunk cycling lines, which feed to lower car density backstreets - so certainly one can cycle the suburbs, but without the excellent ammenities of cycle-lanes on every street over 30km/h like in Holland or Belgium.

> cyclists are less annoying than drivers

I had to laugh out loud at this, please define "less annoying".

As a daily cyclist in Paris my very own statistics say that about 95% of them (yes, that's NINETY FIVE percent) are either color blind, suicidal or willfully ignore the most basic rule, aka red lights. And yes that include M12 signs which have arrows indicating directions in which running the red light is authorized, that is ignored as well. Breaking these 95% down into categories, the vast majority would be delivery guys - you can easily imagine their "excuse" - and (usually young) idiotic morons on bikeshares (Vélib, Dott, Lime, etc) who therefore do not own the bikes and therefore care even less. I'm especially angry at parents on cargo bikes who run red lights with kids with them, this is not only suicidal, it's borderline criminal. But, you know, they are saving the planet, or something.

So I kinda disagree with the "less annoying", cyclists in Paris are the reason why everybody in Paris hates cyclists.

This is not just Paris but drivers are the same on the inside.

The in my experience difference is enforcement. A higher proportion of cyclists believe they will get away with breaking rules and so you see much more of it. Once it’s a norm to sneak around that corner or cross that road then other rule breaking follows.

This can only be fixed with enforcement. It can be ameliorated with infrastructure and more permissive rules where appropriate but the only way to make cyclists less annoying is enforcement.

EDIT: I say this as someone who very rarely drives and even then only outside of the city.

How far outside central Paris does the cycle infra reach? Are the suburbs still very car-centric?

Is Paris still full of dog poop?

> especially for pedestrians as cyclists are less annoying than drivers

As an American pedestrian I find cyclists far worse on average than drivers. They far more often ignore traffic signs and I have seen multiple collisions including one that looked quite serious, though luckily no fatalities.

On a per person basis my personal annoyance scale goes subway riders have least impact, followed by busses, normal pedestrians, cars, joggers, then cyclists at the top. Obviously cars are quite dangerous but they are more predictable. Bikes and joggers seem to spend a lot of time looking at traffic not who they are going to run into.

Edit: To be clear I think this would improve as more average people start cycling.

Way less noise though

Sure, that's fair.

I don't think London has made quite the strides in bikeability that Paris has since 2020, but when I visited Hackney last year I was astonished to see more bikes during rush hour than cars. Walking down a road to a coffee shop, I actually had to wait a few seconds to cross at the intersection between two bike highways.

Hundreds of people riding bikes to work. And as quiet as the wilderness behind my house in the rural USA. I could hear the wind in the trees, and that was it. Maybe a little drivetrain noise from a poorly maintained bike here or there.

I desperately want to live in a city that quiet. Back when I lived in NYC practically every environment was an assault on the ears.

A treat for you: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?t=289 :)

And way less particulate pollution. Automobile drivers are actively hurting you everytime you breathe their exhaust fumes, tire wear dust, or brake pad dust. Of course the same can be said for bicycle tires or brakes on a far smaller scale, or probably even pedestrian plastic shoe soles.

That no fatalities bit is the crucial part. And for quality of life the amount of noise is just much better for bikes, which if you live somewhere with roads and bicycle lanes, you'd love for all the cars to go away and just have bicycles. You just need separates infrastructure, as a pedestrian you should almost never have to share a space with bicycles (or cars for that matter). And if you are on a shared space any sane design will make all cars and bicycles wait and slow down. And at that point they can't be annoying cause you don't have to go out of the way for them ever, they can wait (and seethe I suppose).

> as a pedestrian you should almost never have to share a space with bicycles

These collisions are mostly at intersections, which aren't avoidable on a flat surface you would need to go 3D.

I'm in favor of raised sidewalks for pedestrians, but they are relatively pricey infrastructure.

Edit: > That no fatalities bit is the crucial part.

Globally I think the rates are quite a bit lower. But in the US it's closer than it might seem based on how many more drivers there are than cyclists. Cyclist only kill about 4 pedestrians per year in the US, but cyclists are also vastly less common especially on a per mile basis. https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/pedestrians-kill...

To be clear I don't this says as much about bikes as it does the biased population of people currently using them.

If we are comparing against cars though this is a no brainer. Cars and trucks are extremely hard on infrastructure while people and bikes are basically free. Go 3D!

Cars (drivers, really) are very, very dangerous. They are the leading cause of dead children. They are also one of the reasons kids don't play in the street. I find that far less annoying than cyclists.

Drivers are a lot more common than cyclists in the US.

So yes cars kill ~7,000 pedestrians per year vs ~4 (2013-2020) for bikes, but normalize the numbers and bikes are also very dangerous in the US especially on a per mile basis. https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/pedestrians-kill...

https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-i...

your first link is for the UK, I think? That seems like a separate issue in a place with very different urban design and habits.

What's remarkable is that cars kill thousands of pedestrians _even after we've greatly reduced the frequency of walking_. If the pool were full of sharks then deaths by shark would quickly fall to 0 of course since nobody would swim anymore!

Ops, can’t find national numbers for the US. NYC alone had at least 7 pedestrians killed by cyclists from 2011-2019 plus several more recent deaths not counted by this article. That works out to ~10x safer per cyclist and fairly close mile. (As a side note NYC cabs are driving 100k miles per year!)

https://nypost.com/2019/08/31/nyc-bicyclists-are-killing-ped...

Seems like much of the danger of cycling is due to being near cars though, while the reverse isn't true. Better infrastructure and less car subsidy is likely to make cycling a lot safer, whereas cars already have ~all the infrastructure and subsidy and are still enormously dangerous

The danger for cyclists is drivers, the danger for pedestrians is both.

Seconding this. American cyclists are extremely rude to pedestrians. Whenever somebody brings this up, cyclists dismiss it by pointing out that cars kill more pedestrians than bikes. Well that's certainly true, but I've never had cars yell at me for walking on the sidewalk or over a crosswalk, while cyclists have hurled abuse and (deliberate) near misses at me more times than I can count.

And a driver assaulted me with his car last week (I was on a bike in a "sharrow" lane). Almost put me into the ditch, and when I didn't fall, he proceeded to brake-check me.

I've had food thrown at me by motorists when I'm in dedicated bike lanes.

I've been buzzed by trucks and buses while in bike lanes.

I see cars regularly use the bike lane outside my house to make aggressive passes of slower auto traffic.

Pedestrians have been killed crossing the streets near my house. All by cars, not bicycles.

Cars regularly kill animals. And not just squirrels, but raptors and fox and other predators we don't want to lose.

And on and on. We all have our anecdotes. The answer is dedicated infrastructure for a range of transportation.

> but I've never had cars yell at me for walking ... over a crosswalk

You don't live in Boston, I see.

True, I don't. I recognize that driver and pedestrian culture are very different indifferent cities. However a significant number of cyclists seem to hate pedestrians everywhere I've gone.

To the other responder, I agree that cars are frequently assholes to cyclists, but how is that relevant to cyclists abusing pedestrians?

You have. They're just cussing you out in their cars, where you can't hear them.

Laughable opinion as a fellow American and New Yorker. A bike crash is an unfortunate, and potentially scary event. A car crash is often life threatening or fatal. You're just not weighing the cost of each type of incident properly

Your personal observation does not match statistics. Most statistics show that in the majority of bike car crashes the driver has been at fault. The second link which is for Berlin where cyclist have a very bad reputation it's 77% the drivers fault, in contrast for car pedestrian accidents it was 50/50.

I also find these complaints interesting, considering that it's generally considered the norm to drive about 10% above the speed limit, and especially pedestrians are happy to cross traffic lights at red all the time.

https://www.quadlockcase.com.au/blogs/news/8-key-facts-about...

https://www.udv.de/resource/blob/79324/c290c92fc2f0712187c0d... (sorry German)

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