SoCaled 

https://slate.com/business/2023/03/p...ry-france.html

masi61

If Paris can make the necessary changes, I have hope for American cities to move in this direction and we have a template of some other urban geography (other than Holland) that can implement impactful solutions to improve quality of life.

himespau 

Too bad that 30% decrease in traffic collisions isn't going to convince anybody here.

bikemig 

I lived in Paris in the mid 80s. It was my junior year abroad so I was taking university classes. I was also working part time in a bike shop near the Gare du Nord. I showed up at the store to check it out and the owner was so surprised to find an American who was fluent in French and knew bikes that he offered me a job. I, of course, used that money to buy a bike (a Motobecane with a full Reynolds 531 frame and a Shimano 600 group). I rode that bike everywhere in Paris. There were few if any bike lanes and the traffic was awful. I didn't care. When you are in your 20s, you know you will live forever. Plus I was riding faster than the cars. But yeah you had to deal with lots and lots of cars which meant that only a few crazy people were on bikes. What Paris is doing makes a lot of sense.

base2 

So the complaints from Paris' detractors are from the adjacent boroughs that had a free pass to use Paris' streets for their personal automobile & those complaints are about things hardly unique to conditions inside to Paris alone?

Maybe, just maybe, those people...Instead of going into Paris for all things economic activity, they are choosing to spend money, travel, & live in their own city and stay closer to home. You would think whatever local 'burb that is retaining the benefit of being adjacent to a major metropolitan area would be delighted at the money & tax base kept local.

Steve B.

NYC is ramping up to enact congestion pricing, which essentially does the same thing of greatly reducing private car traffic in the central core of Manhattan. This is something that is done in countless major metropolitan areas around the world and works well, but of course being NY is being fought tooth and nail here. I think NY will be the first city in the US to do this, if it goes through.

50PlusCycling

I live in Tokyo, Japan, where 16% of the population commutes by bicycle (a number close to the entire population of Paris). Tokyo has not “kicked out the cars” from the city because motor vehicles are an essential part of the economic infrastructure. Any limitation on motor vehicle access to the city would have serious economic consequences, and Japanese people aren’t stupid enough to do such a thing. Tokyo has pretty much no cycling infrastructure aside from parking, there are no dedicated bike lanes, and very few bike baths. Yet Tokyo is a very safe place for cycling.

Why? Because Japan’s driver license standards are very high, emphasizing safety. Japan’s laws governing motor vehicle operation are harsh, and harshly enforced. If a motor vehicle hits a pedestrian or cyclist, the motor vehicle is deemed responsible, regardless of the circumstances. Any collision resulting in an injury is considered a crime, any accident causing a fatality will result in a mandatory prison sentence. Japan does not believe in the concept of “accidents,” any collision is a matter of negligence, and negligence is not tolerated when operating something as potentially dangerous as a motor vehicle.

Currently, it costs $48 to get a drivers license in the state of Florida, you need to take a test with 50 questions, and get at least 40 correct, the driving test takes only a few minutes. In Japan the typical cost to get a drivers license is about $3000, a 100 question written test and a difficult road test. Most people fail the written test on their first attempt, almost no one passes the road test on their first attempt. For non-Japanese it can take 5 or 6 attempts to pass, and some people who are experienced drivers in their home countries never pass the Japanese test.

Duragrouch

... as indicated in the article, brought to you by... socialist politicians. Right on. For that reason alone, will never happen in the USA. But the main reason is people living in suburbs far from work. Didn't used to be. Inclement winter weather is also a factor in northern cities. I used to bike to work seasonally. Most folks also are not fit enough, especially for hills, but e-bikes are a big help there. The E in my bike is for exercise.

But the changes in Paris sound much more appealing for a vacationer with a folding bike. Or retiree. Too bad I can't afford to live there.

jon c. 

reducing traffic congestion is socialist?

base2 

That the government provides infrastructure at all is Socialist.

No judgement one way or the other from me. Just an acknowledgement of reality. The article correctly identified the party. I didn't read the post above was doing anything other than the same acknowledgement of the state of things

unterhausen

Traffic in Paris was scary, hopefully it's better now. Seems to me that there are still plenty of cars, but they have reallocated the space to fit the number of users for each mode of traffic. I don't know why they haven't done the same in NYC before now, there is far too much space allocated to suburban New Jerseyites who treat the place like an amusement park.

3alarmer 

.
...anyone remember the '67 Goddard movie "Weekend" ? I remember seeing it when it first played at the art house cinema in D.C. For some reason, I assumed it must be a good description of French highway and political conditions.

RChung

My wife is Parisian, her family is still there, and she has a split position between a university here and a research center there, so we spend part of the year there. There's still a lot of car/truck/bus traffic but since the speed limit was reduced and the expansion of bike lanes, there's been a tremendous increase in ordinary utilitarian everyday cycling. When we first moved there a couple of decades ago, all of my wife's friends and coworkers thought I was nuts for riding in the city. I avoided the few bike lanes that existed at the time and just rode in the street with the cars. It used to be that the only people who rode in Paris were either very poor or else very crazy (e.g., Americans). Especially since Hidalgo (starting before but noticeably accelerating under Hidalgo) bike infrastructure has vastly improved and now not only many of my wife's colleagues ride to work, but so does my wife: she has commuted by bike to campus for years here in the US, but started commuting to her campus in Paris by bike only since the expansion of the bike lanes. Before, she'd never ride in Paris; since Hidalgo, she's been riding across to the other side of the city to visit her parents and friends.

unterhausen

That's great to hear. I wanted to go ride in Paris in 2019, but I was more interested in recovering from the jet lag for my ride, so I didn't. Hopefully I get to go back and ride around.

Duragrouch

OK I looked that up. I'm pro-bike-commuting and anti-car. But here's the problem with all that:

1) Root Cause: At one time, most of the people that worked in NYC, LIVED in NYC. Now the population of the city triples every work day. Never implement a short-term solution without addressing the long-term solution, otherwise, the short-term solution becomes the permanent solution. Make plans, NOW, for increasing housing in NYC. First, take a 100% poll of all workers in the city, and ask, if you COULD afford to live in the city, WOULD you live in the city? No? Tell me why. Determine there will be big demand for fairly priced housing in the city? Good. Start with a moratorium on building for business, as there is already an imbalance between business residency and worker residency. When a LOT more people live in the city, see how much car congestion in the downtown drops.

2) I agree with reducing congestion. This often involves taxes. But let's say, I could clap my hands together in a kumbaya moment and get everyone to reduce congestion, be it carpooling, biking, whatever, would that satisfy the NYC powers that be? NO. Because they also want the tax money to supposedly improve transit. And that is *contradictory* to the intended goals of reducing congestion. Which, it would do, if people actually have a choice, if there is elasticity in choice of transportation. Cigarette and alcohol taxes do reduce consumption. Gasoline taxes don't, not for people who have no choice but to drive, can't afford a high MPG car, and only drive when they need to. Same for congestion pricing for people that have no alternatives. Provide those alternatives, that poor and middle-income people can afford.

3) Flat taxes like this one, disproportionately affect those who have no alternative to transport, and who are usually poor. EDIT: It's worse than a flat tax, it's a REGRESSIVE tax. $15 additional on top of bridge/tunnel fees is a ton of money for the working poor. $15 doesn't buy lunch for the wealthy who commute into the city. So those wealthy should be charged proportionately. Earn 100x a low wage worker, pay 100x the congestion tax. (And by the way, this is how traffic fines work in northern Europe, some high flyers in supercars have been charged astonishingly high ticket fees.) Oh, but that would offend the powerful wealthy, who pay campaign contributions, and play golf with city leaders. Also, see how many wealthy suddenly hire helicopters and pilots, and soon you'll have congestion and accidents there, so you need to cover all bases there.

4) Establish infrastructure for alternate transport. All business to have facilities for bicyclists, from bringing bikes inside to changing rooms. Make the buses and subways cheap enough for low-income workers to ride into and out of the central business district.

5) Be careful for what you wish for; High tax at night, and people won't come to town for a nice dinner and a show. All other transport needs to be safe at night.

6) Now, understanding the above, implement your congestion pricing, on a fair basis. But increasing housing in the city will do far, FAR more in reducing congestion.

unterhausen

There is no shortage of alternative ways of getting around in NYC. People will figure it out. Ain't nobody going to Manhattan in their beat up '95 saturn for a minimal wage job.

jon c. 

They couldn't afford to park the car.

Duragrouch

As Randy Newman said, "I could be wrong... but I don't think so." Janitorial staff for all the corporate buildings, fast-food workers, restaurant workers including wait, bus, and dishwashing staff, and possibly even some prep cooks fresh off the boat. Any non-union labor. Park cleaning staff. Gas station staff. Parking lot attendants. Hotel cleaning staff. Dry cleaning workers. Food store cashiers and stockers. Clothing store workers. I'll bet there is a ton of minimum wage workers that flood each weekday into Manhattan, because they sure can't afford to live there, and these days, uptown neither.

I agree that some solution is needed. But as I've said, commit to solving the long-term problem of nearby housing that does not require a car, then, give incentives to reduce congestion; One might be congestion pricing, but not on the backs of the poor, that is worse than a flat tax, it's regressive, a much larger portion of a paycheck than the white-collar wealthy that work in Manhattan. You could also do the reverse, charge no bridge or congestion fees for registered carpools, because that money saved is a big deal to the working poor, and that reduces congestion. But that doesn't generate income. If the city needs income to improve transportation, tax the wealthy, proportionately.

Duragrouch

Absolutely true. But someone might drop them off and pick them up, rather than them riding on a bus two hours each way.

When I was last in Manhattan (summer 2001), if I went there from my brother's house way out on Long Island, I would drive at the crack of dawn into NYC via the only free bridge at time, find some free parking (probably no longer exists), pull the bike off the rack, and bike around the city all day, never chaining the bike, even then, bike theft in NYC was very high, especially for a road race bike that looks like new. If coming from my aunt's house in Jersey across from Yonkers, I'd bike it all, mostly thru Palisades park to the GW Bridge and across, then down along the Hudson to downtown. Then the reverse going home. That was a ride, quite a workout.

StarBiker

Just imagine the infrastructure changes. I try to bike when I can, but it's nearly impossible to do anything in the burbs with just a bike alone. You have to live close to the commercial zone like I do. Riding in the road is taking your life in your hands. Plenty of ramped sidewalks for miles (Yes, you can ride on them legally no matter the opinion of others). I still have to drive to get to certain things. And carry some things.

unterhausen

But they are not driving now and the congestion pricing won't hurt them. It will make the bus ride take less time. If the city wasn't run by car brains, there would be more bus lanes and they wouldn't be full of people parking illegally without consequence. The police in NYC are currently losing their minds because someone put stickers on some illegally parked cop cars.

RChung

I missed this article in Le Monde from last November: "In Paris, use of cycling lanes doubled in a year." That was from November 2022 to November 2023, so growth in cycling continued after the growth in COVID eased, even during the colder weather months. https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs...0_4355770.html

georges1

Paris is not really the paradise for cyclist as proves this article from AP from 28 september 2023 Long a city that embraced cars, Paris is seeing a new kind of road rage: Bike-lane traffic jams and I quote "Many cyclists, some clearly new and still feeling their way around, seem to think red lights and road rules don’t apply to them." I was almost hit by a cyclist as a pedestrian last time I was in Paris when going to my office. It still doesn't prevent that when people don't stop a red lights they are representing a danger to anyone else safety.As far as car riders respecting cyclists in Paris , it is a half/half true affirmation same goes for cyclists respecting pedestrians.

RChung

The AP article was built from anecdotes ("many riders seem to think rules don't apply to them") while the Le Monde article was based on data ("use of cycling lanes doubled in a year").

Anecdotes *can* be data, of a sort, but let's see how cyclist/driver/pedestrian behavior evolves. Whenever there's a large, new, and relatively fast change in behavior (and a doubling of the use of the bike lanes in a year qualifies) there's a period of adjustment. I've been riding in Paris for a couple of decades, and when the first pistes cyclables were installed, the danger to cyclists was the pedestrians who would walk into them without looking, or the cars that would use them for parking. That has changed over the years. I expect cyclists' behavior to change, too.

ScottCommutes

Fort Lee (directly across the Hudson River in NJ via the George Washington Bridge) just sued to stop this. The timing was interesting that the news broke the Friday before Easter, but I don't believe that was deliberate. There will be lots of negative impacts in Fort Lee, in part because more people will want to use the bridge instead of the tunnels to beat the congestion pricing. Fort Lee is already a traffic nightmare and it is totally unfair to make them a designated loser in this plan.