Paris Closed 100 Streets to Cars for Good. Now, the City Is a Cyclists' Paradise | Hacker News Reader

Paris Closed 100 Streets to Cars for Good. Now, the City Is a Cyclists' Paradise

bicycling.com

90 pointsmadeofpalk68 comments

Other major cities must start making significant headway in this direction. As a New Yorker, I am very interested in getting rid of all cars in NYC.

NYC (Specifically, Governor Hochul) has "indefinitely paused" the rollout of a new congestion pricing system for cars in Manhattan, which was a step in the right direction perhaps, but certainly not a solution by any means.

Following Paris' lead and removing parking spaces, streets, and improving more sustainable transit is the only way forward if we want to start mitigating climate instability.

NYC I feel is one of the few (if only!) cities in America that has the ability to get rid of all private cars within 10 years. We could also become a cyclists' paradise! We need to give the politicians a mandate to accomplish this or they will flail about as always until we all get swallowed up by a tsunami or something.

I'm really bummed that they canceled congestion pricing. We almost did the right thing for the city and the planet, and of course at the last minute some politicians have to go and fuck it up. They're really the worst.

I also am against policies that only allow rich to do stuff, annoyed by this idea that rich can always buy their way out of things, if there’s a problem with cars then just ban it for all

Ironically, its the rich who mostly likely put the pressure on to kill this bill.

I wouldn’t be opposed to making tolls and fines income based, like some Nordic countries.

I once was finishing up eating at Astro diner (iirc) on 55th and 6th and some guy in a lambo double parked across the street on 6th, blocking traffic, and just left it there. Cops came pretty quickly and were ticketing it, but there’s no way the person driving a $400k car cares about a $100 ticket. When we walked out they were still trying to figure out what to do, as they weren’t even sure a tow company would come to take it.

I think a happy compromise would be

1. Ban all non-electric vehicles (because noise and pollution)

2. Allow electric taxis/ride share vehicles

3. Convert all reasonable roads to one-way, half for vehicles half for bicycles and other small transportation options (I’m thinking scooters, Segways, and such)

4. Remaining roads for bicycles and other small vehicles

What do y’all thinking of bringing back horse drawn carriages?

I think large trucks and SUVs should not be legal to drive through the city without a valid business permit. Special temporary permits can he granted to newly purchased vehicles.

Large vehicles are a safety hazard to pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists in smaller cars. They take more parking space, and consume more gas/electricity.

Asia is full of trucks and vans that are smaller than most four door cars in NA... There's really no reasonable reason for someone to be driving a vehicle the size of an F-150 in the city unless it's being used for construction IMHO.

In Montreal, areas with permitted parking charge by e.g. the weight of the vehicle, the size of a vehicles engine, or the length of the vehicle (it changes by borough/year). It's an OK proxy for big cars, but people still are willing to pay it.

We got rid of horse drawn carriages in Montreal relatively recently for animal cruelty reasons.

I don't think NYC is capable of getting rid of all cars. Maybe Manhattan. But there are five boroughs. Queens, most of Brookyln, and Staten Island aren't quite as easy to live in without a car. If you live in Bayridge and work in Bayonne as a carpenter, its sure a hell of a lot easier with a car.

I'd love to see more sidewalk and less road here. The pandemic-induced trend of sidewalk/street seating at cafes and restaurants and closed streets (like St. Marks in manhattan and Vanderbilt in Brooklyn) really make the spring/summer/fall here a joy, but it's silly that we have to sit in little huts in former parking spaces. Make it official and permanent. NYC sidewalks are wide as for America, but pretty narrow compared to the rest of the world.

I was in Berlin recently, and some of the more posh neighborhoods have enormous sidewalks, full of people walking, or sipping espresso and chatting. I'm jealous!

Well, as an Amsterdam resident, I would not go as far as to describe Paris as a cyclist's paradise, but the recent pedestrian/cycle-friendly road repurposing has definitely improved the city, pretty much for everyone, as far as I can tell.

Now, let's just hope the local cyclists don't adopt the same combative attitude as, say, those in Amsterdam, or the many, many remaining motorists on La Periferie...

While I have not cycled in Amsterdam, as a Parisian cyclist I can confirm. Paris is currently overwhelmingly better than what's in most other big cities, but still far away from being as good as the Netherlands infrastructures.

There are still a lot of oddities, insufficient infrastructure, and cycling no-man's land.

But yes, it has overall made things better for everyone, even for the remaining motorists: as reduced demand have kicked in, the remaining motorists (as far as my observations go) experience less traffic. Of course, there is a LOT less cars now.

Though now, bicycle lane jams are actually happening ... Which is a good problem to have I guess.

> Now, let's just hope the local cyclists don't adopt the same combative attitude as, say, those in Amsterdam, or the many, many remaining motorists on La Periferie...

The combative attitude exists regardless of the vehicles. Heck even pedestrians have similar attitudes in busy places.

Let's be clear: this article is at best ill-informed or completly partial.

For examples: > the city voted to triple parking charges for the biggest, most polluting cars

Mmmm... not really. Participation was 5,68% of people living in Paris (only! without any consideration for the suburb). And the Mayor said first that only "outsider" would be taxed... and changed her mind after the vote.

The Anne Hidalgo's plan seem to turn Paris into some kind of Disneyland Park. Would you spend your life in such a park?

Actually, even Parisian are less and less fond of this "greenification" of Paris because it causes more and more problems for them too (OK, they don't give a shit if it makes problem for suburbs people working in Paris... but now it starts to impact them too)

Companies are leaving Paris (too expensive) and people are thinking twice before accepting a job offer inside Paris because of transportation.

Actually, the situation is so bad that public transportation are asking since month to people and companies to work remotly during the Olympics because... well... it will be a real nightmare. And not everybody will have a bicyle

So, watch what you're wishing for. It's nice to be able to use bicyle from time to time when you want... but it's a bit different to have transportation problems because cars that absolutly must cross Paris (taxis, ambulance, people living there, truck that recharge shops...) are all stacked up in less and less street to develop cycling

[Edit] For the record, I live in Paris...

> if it makes problem for suburbs people working in Paris

I live in suburb and cycle everyday to Paris inner center for work. I see every year more and more cyclist riding the new infrastructures, but the road are as bloated in their jam as they always have been.

> cars that absolutly must cross Paris

The point is precisely that most of the transit does not-so-absolutely-need to be by cars: many taxis and personal cars have more society downside than personal ups.

Walking and biking around Paris always seemed stressful with the narrow sidewalks, hectic traffic, and mopeds going the wrong way up sidewalks. Maybe it has changed, I was last there in 2022, but if so this must have been a dramatic change.

Berlin is already very walkable, but I love the proposition to close the whole inside of the Ring to cars: https://volksentscheid-berlin-autofrei.de/

One can only only hope, but I have my doubts it will ever happen

I'd love to have a bicycle, but battery powered angle grinders are too cheap.

Also cheap: bike insurance, with "we'll drop your new bike within 1hr of you reporting the theft" SLAs. At least, where I live... (and where my last bike was stolen, like, over a decade ago).

When I was in Amsterdam it seemed most people had cheap beater bikes for that very reason. If someone had a nicer bike they’d bring it into their flat.

Doesn’t really help if you’re going out to places and there’s nowhere to bring your bike into. E.g. a restaurant.

I have been spending a few days in another french city and seen some bikes stored at the back of some restaurants, next to the toilets.

Sure it can t be applied to all restaurants but cyclists can choose their place of choice based on how cycling friendly they are.

I do this in Denver, where bike theft is supposedly rampant. Never had an issue, and I live in one of the worse areas and will leave my bike parked and unattended for hours at a time.

I also sticker bombed one of my bikes so that if someone were to steal it, it would be very easily identifiable.

What does identifying it do for you? I had a bike stolen a few years ago and I've seen it a handful of times since then. Police are not interested in this in my experience, basically told me to pound sand. Are you going to steal it back or what?

I've had bikes stolen a few times -- in the midwestern US, and mostly as a kid where my bike was not generally stored very securely.

Usually, they're just...gone.

The police around here do collect bikes that they find dumped in places where they don't belong -- in parks or when reported in random folks' yards or wherever. These get auctioned off if not claimed first.

But I did get my bikes back a few times.

Most memorably, I was doing some random technical work at the local PD and was heading out to have a smoke, and I saw a bike that looked just like mine just standing there on the back dock. Same purple Caloi aluminum frame, same additions (like the 90s-style Control Stix bar ends), same everything, except it had an inventory tag on it.

Which very seemed strange to me, since I knew very well that my bike was safe at home. Or did I know that? Maybe my bike wasn't safe at home. Or maybe someone else had the same mods on their own bike, which wasn't particularly unlikely since I bought all of it from a singular bike shop in town?

So I asked about it. And they're like "Well, if that's your bike, then maybe you can tell us something about it that is identifiable. Something unique that you couldn't see in the five minutes you've been standing there staring at it."

I couldn't think of anything. But that ultimately didn't matter -- they were fucking with me for the lulz.

"Maybe you don't remember doing this," they continued, "but it's got your name, address, and phone number engraved on the bottom of it."

Fuck! I did put that on there over a decade prior, and I completely forgot. That certainly was convenient for future-me.

Anyhow, it took a couple of days for them to finish their bureaucratic paperwork dance, and then I had my bike (that I didn't even know I was missing) back. Thanks, in large part, to having some identifying features.

That's fun and a good outcome. I had registered mine in the local system, run by the police department. The first time I saw it after it was stolen it was just locked on the street so I could check the frame number. I called the police and they said there was no evidence, they weren't going to come check it, and that if I cut it loose and took it that would be a felony. I saw it a couple years being ridden in traffic but didn't bother to do anything.

As of now, I haven't ever needed to steal a bike back. I view it more as theft deterrent. They'll be less likely to be able sell it, and it makes the bike look like it's not as valuable.

I just owned a cheap bicycle that I wasn't afraid to lose. There's loads of used steel-frame bikes from the 90s that ride just fine after a tune-up and cost less than $100. The U-lock and the slightly beat-up exterior seemed to put off any would-be bike thieves here in NYC. But if/when it finally gets taken I won't be too upset.

Depends on where you live, of course.

Once you reach a critical mass where almost everybody own a bike, theft becomes less of an issue.

Theft is a big issue during the transition phase when a city is becoming more and more cycling friendly and a lot of people are actually looking for a bike.

You can get an old rusty one off facebook market or similar for not much money. The thieves ignore them for the fancier looking bikes. Both my previous ones left on the street in London died through impact rather than theft - the first by the police removing it as a terrorist hazzard(!) and the second by someone crashing into it. Which is another advantage of cheap bikes.

Copenhagen, Denmark, started doing this maybe 20 years ago. Today there are very few cars in the center of town and very few car parking spots. The few there are is super expensive and hard to get.

No pointers to a map showing these 100 streets ? So that one might get a sense of how aggressive the plan is ?

Bicycles are great if you are under 35 years old and it’s not extremely cold or raining.

As an older cyclist, ebikes are good.

Not just cyclists, of course, but also pedestrians and people living there.

I know it's completely illusory considering the vastly different fatality rate, but as a pedestrian I often feel more at risk dodging cyclists, who completely disregard traffic signals, ride on sidewalks, and make frequently unpredictable movements, than cars, which follow traffic signals 95% of the time, don't generally operate on sidewalks, and tend to be more predictable, although the results can be catastrophically worse when they are negligently operated.

The number of fatalities caused by cyclists is very small, but still non-zero. Here's some stats for New York City:

> In 2022 (the last full year for which there is data), three pedestrians were killed by cyclists, while 131 pedestrians and cyclists were killed by car and truck drivers. In that same year, 313 pedestrians were injured by cyclists, while 13,190 cyclists and pedestrians were injured by car and truck drivers.[0]

I've also seen numbers that there are about 600K cycling "trips" taken each day in NYC[1], versus 4 million cars per day driving in or through the city[2].

While those stats aren't measuring exactly the same thing, it appears that there's basically a 10x order of magnitude difference between the two forms of transportation. With that in mind, looking at the previous fatality numbers, bikes are still admittedly 4-5x safer than cars given equal use.

Even so, if we managed to get rid of 80-90% of motor vehicles, we would reach a point where in raw numbers people would be more likely to be injured or killed by bicycles than cars. At that point, I wonder if insurance would be required?

[0] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/09/16/senior-struck-by-citi...

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/cyclinginthecit...

[2] https://www.nydailynews.com/2019/03/21/why-not-charge-cars-t...

All true. But one should also consider the cyclist's view, which is that once the cars are gone, people walk wherever and however they want, bike lane or not.

That's not to say that "it's their own fault for getting hit", of course.

The proper comparison should be cars there vs no cars there. Once the cars are gone everything changes. No longer do bikes need to swerve around cars. Suddenly there's room for them. So that could reduce the risk of them hitting a pedestrian.

Very often a car can block an entire intersection, because they gambled that they'd get through, but then got stuck. A bike will never block things like that. And I'd wager those cases are much more dangerous for all kinds of accidents. The car may be blocking visibility, so that the cyclist and the pedestrian can no longer see each other.

But my comment was actually not about safety. It was about quality of life. It just happens that it ALSO improves safety.

Cyclists can never be at fault, they can only be faulted. It's always the responsibility of drivers, transit, pedestrians to watch out. If you are a cyclist, you have the divine right to scream obscenities at anyone who dares interrupt your path.

Although, if two cyclists collide in an intersection, that's the unstoppable force vs immovable object scenario of assigning blame.

I am a bike commuter, but guys like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dFimQobFGo) give us a bad reputation.

I do see many cyclists blatantly violating traffic rules. But I'm not even sure cyclists are more prone to do so than drivers.

Stand at an intersection and count how many times light turning red does not have a car sneak right after. Or stop with half the car over the stop line. Or motorcycles being in front, in the bike-only area. Or drivers who treat bike lanes as "oh I'll just stop here 10 minutes, who cares?".

My experience with cycling in cities is that you quickly discover that basically nobody obeys any traffic rules. Cyclists are just the ones doing it the most blatantly, because honestly when they do it it's not actually that unsafe.

> I do see many cyclists blatantly violating traffic rules. But I'm not even sure cyclists are more prone to do so than drivers

I think it's likely that many cyclists blatantly violate traffic rules because they aren't even required to remotely know traffic rules before riding

There is no training or licensing required to cycle

Car drivers are required to be both licensed and insured

I would guess some percentage of cyclists, the very serious cyclists, will know the traffic rules better than almost anyone on the road. The rest will be on par or worse than your average driver

No, it's because roads are designed with cars in mind and bicycles are not cars. It does not make sense to have the same exact set of rules apply to such different vehicles.

Somehow we understand motorcycles aren't cars so we allow them to lane split but a cyclist rolling through a red light is the end of the world even though they pose minimal danger to others.

Not that this matters; we're discussing a local maxima of vehicular cycling. These issues largely disappear once you build separated cycling infrastructure.

> cyclist rolling through a red light is the end of the world even though they pose minimal danger to others.

Much like a deer running in front of traffic, cyclists behaving unexpectedly is a danger of causing other people to wreck in reaction to their behavior

> It does not make sense to have the same exact set of rules apply to such different vehicles.

It actually does because the rules define how we use the space not how we drive our vehicles

I think most cyclists who ignore rules do so because they feel unnecessary: the cyclist has an excellent view (compared to a car), and can easily see there's very little danger in turning right past a red light, or crossing a side street with no other traffic.

Exactly the same reasons in some countries it's common for pedestrians to walk against a red light.

Bike licensing has never and will never work. Plenty of cities have tried it and it doesn't make a difference.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-29/why-bicyc...

Actually, studies have shown that motorists are the biggest traffic rules offenders.

The thing is cyclists who are running the lights are more visible because it triggers the jealousy of other users having to wait who thus ignore the majority of cyclists who are actually abiding to the rules and waiting, and the huge amount of motorists who floor the accelerator and run the light after it changes (and is only a small fraction of all the rules they don't follow).

The other reasons some motorists feel cyclists obey less to the rules is because motorists feel more entitled to bend them at their wishes than other, the worse at that being the one driving as part of their professional duties.

I cycle and drive and break the traffic rules far more often on the bicycle, mostly because there is no enforcement. Also you can do less harm on the bike.

I am not surprised. Sounds like you're saying studies support exactly what I was saying.

Your stats are backwards. Motorists do not follow the law 95% of the time, it's more like 34% of the time. It's cyclists who follow the law 95% of the time.

> A new study from the Danish Road Directorate shows that less than 5% of cyclists break traffic laws while riding yet 66% of motorists do so when driving.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists...

Cyclists break the law to avoid being killed by law-breaking motorists who think they're the only people who belong on the road and refuse to share it. Oh and if you want to talk just traffic signals, 84% of cyclists stop at red lights. It's nowhere near your made up 95% figure and there's no data to support that number. It's just a myth drivers tell themselves to hate cyclists.

> “The popular press portrays bicyclists as reckless and a pervasive problem with potentially dire consequences,” said the trio, noting that other studies have shown that the “red-light running bicyclist angers drivers more than any other road user behavior.”

> (A Transport For London camera study of 7,500 cyclists at five junctions found in 2007 that, contrary to popular perception, most cyclists do not run reds: 84% of the cyclists stopped at red traffic lights.)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2020/09/18/motorist...

This is starting up in US cities as well.

One nearest me trying but they are more interested in giving the road and sidewalks to bar owners as an extension of their business. Not walking just a couple tables like you see everywhere. During Covid they let them build pretty large outdoor structures right into the road. Naturally all of the units are owned by a single corporation, which of course is pushing for it.

It's a very slow progress. Boston has been making tons and tons of progress over the last few years that impressed me but any benefit public derived from increasing bike lanes, safer bike lanes etc were essentially undone by the absolute unspeakable clusterfuck public transportation became (frequent subway closures due to maintenance, practically unusable bus service due to disgusting amount of traffic, no investment etc...). I am hopeful things will improve steadily and Boston will be a European-lite city in USA in the next decade or so, but I might be too optimistic. It's relatively practical to bike in NYC and Philadelphia as well. I personally enjoy biking in NYC but many New Yorkers complain about safety, which makes sense given how chaotic and aggressive NYC traffic is, you do not want to be a meat pie on the road. We have tons of more progress to do, not enough investment into this because 99% of Americans who don't live inside a major non-driving big city don't give a shit about non-car transportation.

I like cycling but I think that removing vehicles entirely from cities is silly. It might be possible but it's not going to be actually better.

I'm imagining strapping 100kg+ of toolboxes to the front of my electric cargo bike. It theoretically is possible. But if someone walks out in front of that it's going to be ugly. The braking systems are nowhere near as good as a car's. If it rains it'll be miserable, I'd put up my rates significantly to compensate and a lot of people would rather just exit the market.

It feels like once you actually account for real things that need to happen like vans carting building materials, you're back where you started except that now everyone needs a license to do the same things they did before in their "personal" vehicles.

If you still have lorries and vans and buses then it feels like a lot of the safety and emission arguments fall apart really.

> If you still have lorries and vans and buses then it feels like a lot of the safety and emission arguments fall apart really.

An engine moving thousands of pounds of cargo is a lot more efficient than an engine moving move two hundred pounds of flesh.

Also lorries and delivery vans use can be limited to specific time window. That is what actually happen in historic city centers that are closed to traffic in many european cities: delivery vehicles can still deliver goods at specific time schedules in the morning when the streets are less busy with pedestrians and they have to do so at low speed.

> If you still have lorries and vans and buses then it feels like a lot of the safety and emission arguments fall apart really.

Disagree strongly. Special access sharply reduces the number of vehicles, of course, but it also changes the natures of the people driving them. A larger proportion will be professionally-employed drivers and moving through a pedestrian-only area that lacks a defined right of way or traffic devices is going to compel most drivers to move at a creeping pace. Traffic citations are more likely under these circumstances as well.

Buses and trams (there's little practical difference when the bus right of way might as well be rails) are unlikely to be operated by aggressive, inattentive, inexperienced, or inebriated drivers, and they're more predictable.

On emissions, there are reductions, first because fewer drivers overall, fewer low-occupancy vehicles with no cargo, and then second order effects on car ownership and miles driven for nearby communities.

> It feels like once you actually account for real things that need to happen like vans carting building materials, you're back where you started except that now everyone needs a license to do the same things they did before in their "personal" vehicles.

There is a finite amount of space in cities which simply isn't enough for everyone to be driving around in personal cars all the time.

Pedestrians and bikes take up much less space than cars (both moving and parked). By getting people to stop using cars unnecessarily and switch to transit, walking, and biking, you can actually free up space for the remaining vehicles to get around, even if doing so requires restricting vehicular traffic on some streets.

Look at Amsterdam. The traffic is less bad there despite more space being allocated to pedestrians and bikes than US cities.

If that seems counterintuitive, think about it the other way: Imagine if you were able to slightly increase the number of lanes by removing all sidewalks and eliminating all transit. While there would be space for slightly more cars, traffic would end up being much worse, because all the people who were walking/biking/taking transit would end up taking much more space on the roads than was created by adding the lanes.

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