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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
People not living in Paris can't even grasp how much the city has changed in just 6 years. Starting a bit before 2020 but massively accelerated by the covid situation (and public transport saturation). You could barely cycle safely before and now it's hard to not find a bike lane.
Because of the fast pace, of course not everything is perfect but we have to celebrate this as much as we can.
That's a problem I desperately hope the US has to encounter soon. Too much demand and we have to accelerate our plans to satisfy all those people on bikes!
I concur: I used to ride a bike in Paris during the mid 2010 and I eventually left the city in 2017 in part because I was fed up with the difficulty of the endeavor. And now everytime I travel back there I'm amazed at how far it's gone already, and the number of cyclists keep rising every time!
This year I started seeing a significant amount of cargo bikes, the things that I had only seen in the Nederland before.
I don't know when the growth will stop, but it's already beyond what I could even imagine back then.
While its true that compared to 10 years ago cycling is much better served by the infrastructure, there are still large challenges ahead, and I would mention only two of them:
- many intersection are very poorly signaled if you are riding a bike (not sure for cars is much better) and old bike lanes setups put you in weird situations (ex: bike lane changing from "outside" of the road to "inside" of the road, without clear way to change from one to another)
- there is quite few temporary parking space for personal bikes. Velib works great until there is a rush hour and you either can't find bikes or a parking spot.
> While its true that compared to 10 years ago cycling is much better served by the infrastructure, there are still large challenges ahead
It takes decades (emphases on plural) in most places. Having seen it happen to my hometown from the start of the '90s until about halfway though the '10s as an example. And that was with a head start since in some places it was already done well. And that was in the often mentioned cyclist's Valhalla.
The US is headed on the path of autonomous vehicles as the solution. It's the perfect combination of things our society loves: 1) No new public investment. 2) Continuous, end-to-end air conditioning
I suspect the US is going to get a super bifurcated urbanist result across cities in the next 20 years. Places like NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco (maybe not these exact cities but you get the gist) are going to move strong towards European style urban infrastructure. It seems to be one topic that really does mobilize voters, especially younger educated voters, in these cities. It will in turn attract a lot more of these kinds of people, accelerating the change.
The rest of the US is just going to double down on sprawl.
Done properly (I know…) autonomous vehicles could be a godsend for cycling in the US. If vehicles behaved properly you wouldn't theoretically need cycling infrastructure at all – the dream of vehicular cycling would actually start working and you could share the road anywhere.
The city started during the pandemic and has moved toward making these bike lanes more permanent. There is also a deep dissatisfaction with public transportation here. While comprehensive throughout the entirety of the Paris metropolitan, it is expensive, unreliable (especially the regional RER trains that connect the inner city to suburbs and vital for commuters), often filthy, and at times unsafe (depending on the line). The other issue is the traffic above ground. I've heard reports that there are fewer cars, but it doesn't feel this way. If anything, there are more delivery trucks.
So while infrastructure investment has helped (not to mention some nice tax write-offs and discounts on e-bikes), there are some other issues here. I like bikeable Paris a lot, but the ecological goals of this city's mayor demand much more investment in the city and regional authority's mass transit. It is unreasonable to expect commuters to bike in from many kilometers away. Biking inside Paris upon arrival should be the desired end result. Ultimately to get the cars off the roads, people need to feel good on mass transit so that they want to use it more than a car, and the impression I have right now is that many people are biking because it's better than sweating in filthy, delayed trains.
To that effect, riding a bike is and should be a delight -- not a mere alternative to defunct metro transit, but I know many who are terrorized or disgruntledby biking in Paris. To solve this intractable issue of getting more riders, cars have to be removed from the streets which need to be progressively closed to make room for more bike infrastructure. These kinds of plans well face strident criticism and backlash from the suburbanite commuters. In that vein, I am totally for the Grand Paris Express plan. Make Paris great for Parisians again!
Title is misleading... the source Le Monde article states that use of certain bicycle paths has doubled (or tripled) in certain places, as investment has gone into improving these paths.
That's great, but kind of obvious that if you build out dedicated bike lanes, cyclists are more likely to prefer them to alternate routes.
> kind of obvious that if you build out dedicated bike lanes, cyclists are more likely to prefer them to alternate routes.
That's not obvious at all; it's not even true. It's not uncommon in US cities to install long, wide bike lanes on major roads which see close to 0 daily users. Significant problems include:
- complete lack of physical barriers between cars and bikes
- bike lanes terminating at dangerous roads
- density is still low and there are dangerous parking lots at every destination
- bike lanes are exposed to direct sunlight in 100F+
- a non-trivial number of American drivers need extremely little push to intentionally hurt or kill bibcyclists
Even though it seems obvious you will find the majority of Americans fighting against bike lanes because they think nobody will use it. Having data to show causation like this is genuinely helpful for other countries and cities to follow their lead.
> That's great, but kind of obvious that if you build out dedicated bike lanes, cyclists are more likely to prefer them to alternate routes.
Not really, here in Poland there are new bike lanes, but they go far from the city, so if you need to commute you end up going around the city to finish in a bottleneck when you are approaching the center. So, want it or not, you end up using the alternate routes.
Given safe infrastructure cycling is one of the fastest most reliable forms of transportation in cities. No wonder more people ride if you improve the experience.
It truly is. I moved to a city across my country that has pretty good bike infrastructure. I had never even considered riding a bike for transportation, but after experiencing somewhat good infrastructure that got me to my office faster than driving, I was blown away by how enjoyable, sustainable, and economical it can be.
My wife and I visited Paris last summer and biked everywhere. It felt very safe, not as safe as Copenhagen but still safe. I hope that with more time, as more drivers get used to bikes on the road it will get safer and more people will bike, creating a positive feedback loop.
I'm a strong believer in road culture change happening. Biking in DC changed enormously when our bike share program showed up in 2008. Seeing casual chill people on slow bikes, often a little lost or uneasy, forces a bit of a reset from the classic fast cars vs spandex wheel-stander bikes dynamic.
Having just moved from Houston to Manhattan , I have been really impressed by the number of bikes I see. One factor, which this article doesn’t seem to discuss, is the e-bike. In Paris, is it mostly classical bikes, or are the electronics becoming widespread there too?
People are under the impression that things "are just the way they are" in the US, but it is very much a political choice to not dedicate more funding to keeping people on bicycles safe from automobiles.
Transit, for example, can get better with more ridership: more train capacity is added to a line, and more frequent service may occur for better throughput. Both actions would improve service for each individual rider, so while while one may not want it "crowded", having it busy is good. While with roads, an individual driver may want enough traffic so that a street exists, any traffic beyond that would probably only slow you down.
There are also externalities: more walking, cycling, transit reduces pollution and can improve individual health and the collective health of the population. Driving does the opposite.
I'm sure some people do but I know on HN specifically in most threads around american urban cycling you will see some extremely clear-eyed car advocates. They (rightly) recognize that better prioritizing cycling requires, to some extent, fewer resources allocated to car use and oppose it on those grounds.
Some of it is ignorance but a lot of it is not, and a continuing car-centric world is just their well understood and sincerely held value.
I don’t get how you can make bicycling your only form of transportation, even if the bike travel infrastructure and parking is adequate. When I bicycle, even for a short amount of time like 15 minutes, I sweat, and end up a stinky wet mess at my destination. Especially in the summer. My shoes and pants get dirty from the road and my hair gets wet and messed up especially if it’s raining. So if I’m going anywhere with even a moderate expectation of personal hygiene, I need to 1. Make sure there is a shower at my destination, 2. Haul a change of clothes with me (necessitating a backpack or bag), 3. Hang on to my dirty sweaty clothes in that bag the whole time. Fine if I’m commuting to work where they have a shower and storage. What about going to a restaurant or business meeting or a museum or an appointment with a professional? I honestly don’t know but there are so many cities where people bike everywhere so there must be a solution.
EDIT: ok, ok, I guess e-bikes it is. Still there are cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam where everyone bikes everywhere and they don’t all have e-bikes. Do they just bring multiple changes of clothes everywhere?
I switched to cycling for transportation. Benefits:
1. way more access to the city
2. eliminated need to go to gym; transport time doubles as cardio time
3. freed up time to see people; 15 minutes door to door is hard to beat
I really hope US cities head in this direction. It is a no brainer for cities:
1. higher density -> lower taxes per person, higher tax rev per sqm
2. lower cost of living -> lower inflation
3. quieter; cars on streets are noisy
4. people see each other more; better social cohesion
5. kids are free from the house to do things
but do note that car owners in Paris (where I live) are reaching never-seen-before levels of whining, complaining about the fact that their little selfish privilege is not as cushy as it used to be and that only 80% of the public road infrastructure is dedicated to their idiotic 2 miles journeys on board of their oversized SUVs now
The second order effect is that tax rates will increase to cater to increase in social security payment and medical care thanks to increased life expectancy.
That might also divert money from other public spending that could mean living longer but with lower quality of life.
It must also has be taken into account that driving has become annoying to the point that many people from suburbs don't come anymore to Paris for shopping, theatres, exhibitions, ... and many living inside or nearby are really annoyed by the public transports which are dirty, not on time, too crowded, beggars every few minutes, ... so biking is like a forced solution that helps with some things but isn't always a choice of preference. It's easier to see this in the winter, which is not cold/wet enough in Paris to make cycling difficult, but there are clearly much less cyclists then.
[+] [-] darkamaul|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chopsuey5540|2 years ago|reply
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 ?
[+] [-] CalRobert|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Fradow|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bsaul|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] k99x55|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucsky|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] k99x55|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draw_down|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Ylpertnodi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Retric|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] h1fra|2 years ago|reply
Because of the fast pace, of course not everything is perfect but we have to celebrate this as much as we can.
[+] [-] mattcantstop|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] littlestymaar|2 years ago|reply
This year I started seeing a significant amount of cargo bikes, the things that I had only seen in the Nederland before.
I don't know when the growth will stop, but it's already beyond what I could even imagine back then.
[+] [-] jahnu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vladms|2 years ago|reply
- many intersection are very poorly signaled if you are riding a bike (not sure for cars is much better) and old bike lanes setups put you in weird situations (ex: bike lane changing from "outside" of the road to "inside" of the road, without clear way to change from one to another)
- there is quite few temporary parking space for personal bikes. Velib works great until there is a rush hour and you either can't find bikes or a parking spot.
[+] [-] consp|2 years ago|reply
It takes decades (emphases on plural) in most places. Having seen it happen to my hometown from the start of the '90s until about halfway though the '10s as an example. And that was with a head start since in some places it was already done well. And that was in the often mentioned cyclist's Valhalla.
[+] [-] kindatrue|2 years ago|reply
The US is headed on the path of autonomous vehicles as the solution. It's the perfect combination of things our society loves: 1) No new public investment. 2) Continuous, end-to-end air conditioning
[+] [-] HEmanZ|2 years ago|reply
The rest of the US is just going to double down on sprawl.
[+] [-] twoWhlsGud|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] al_borland|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NegativeLatency|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rangestransform|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doctor_phil|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zahma|2 years ago|reply
So while infrastructure investment has helped (not to mention some nice tax write-offs and discounts on e-bikes), there are some other issues here. I like bikeable Paris a lot, but the ecological goals of this city's mayor demand much more investment in the city and regional authority's mass transit. It is unreasonable to expect commuters to bike in from many kilometers away. Biking inside Paris upon arrival should be the desired end result. Ultimately to get the cars off the roads, people need to feel good on mass transit so that they want to use it more than a car, and the impression I have right now is that many people are biking because it's better than sweating in filthy, delayed trains.
To that effect, riding a bike is and should be a delight -- not a mere alternative to defunct metro transit, but I know many who are terrorized or disgruntledby biking in Paris. To solve this intractable issue of getting more riders, cars have to be removed from the streets which need to be progressively closed to make room for more bike infrastructure. These kinds of plans well face strident criticism and backlash from the suburbanite commuters. In that vein, I am totally for the Grand Paris Express plan. Make Paris great for Parisians again!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express
[+] [-] offsign|2 years ago|reply
That's great, but kind of obvious that if you build out dedicated bike lanes, cyclists are more likely to prefer them to alternate routes.
[+] [-] digging|2 years ago|reply
That's not obvious at all; it's not even true. It's not uncommon in US cities to install long, wide bike lanes on major roads which see close to 0 daily users. Significant problems include:
- complete lack of physical barriers between cars and bikes
- bike lanes terminating at dangerous roads
- density is still low and there are dangerous parking lots at every destination
- bike lanes are exposed to direct sunlight in 100F+
- a non-trivial number of American drivers need extremely little push to intentionally hurt or kill bibcyclists
[+] [-] kfarr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krowek|2 years ago|reply
Not really, here in Poland there are new bike lanes, but they go far from the city, so if you need to commute you end up going around the city to finish in a bottleneck when you are approaching the center. So, want it or not, you end up using the alternate routes.
[+] [-] agumonkey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsaul|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianN|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] milkytron|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timy2shoes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jauntywundrkind|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ckemere|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|2 years ago|reply
People are under the impression that things "are just the way they are" in the US, but it is very much a political choice to not dedicate more funding to keeping people on bicycles safe from automobiles.
[+] [-] throw0101d|2 years ago|reply
Oh The Urbanity had a good video on this, "What People Get Wrong About Induced Demand":
> In this video we explain why induced demand does apply to transit, walking, and cycling infrastructure, but with different consequences.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc
Transit, for example, can get better with more ridership: more train capacity is added to a line, and more frequent service may occur for better throughput. Both actions would improve service for each individual rider, so while while one may not want it "crowded", having it busy is good. While with roads, an individual driver may want enough traffic so that a street exists, any traffic beyond that would probably only slow you down.
There are also externalities: more walking, cycling, transit reduces pollution and can improve individual health and the collective health of the population. Driving does the opposite.
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|2 years ago|reply
Some of it is ignorance but a lot of it is not, and a continuing car-centric world is just their well understood and sincerely held value.
[+] [-] ryandrake|2 years ago|reply
EDIT: ok, ok, I guess e-bikes it is. Still there are cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam where everyone bikes everywhere and they don’t all have e-bikes. Do they just bring multiple changes of clothes everywhere?
[+] [-] tin7in|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frozencell|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] favflam|2 years ago|reply
I really hope US cities head in this direction. It is a no brainer for cities: 1. higher density -> lower taxes per person, higher tax rev per sqm 2. lower cost of living -> lower inflation 3. quieter; cars on streets are noisy 4. people see each other more; better social cohesion 5. kids are free from the house to do things
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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