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Paris to ‘get rid of 70k parking spaces’
- cletus 6y agoGood. Now can we remove the free street parking from Manhattan?
- dybber 6y agoFree? Sounds like socialism! In the center of Copenhagen it's $4-6/hour.
- kspacewalk2 6y agoWhich is probably still a huge bargain/subsidy considering how valuable that space in major city centres is.
- jaclaz 6y agoUnless my math is way off: 30 days x 12 h/day x 5 US$/h= 1,800 US$ month x 12 = 21,600 US$/year Typical rent 5% of value. 21,600/0.05= 432,000 Size of a parking spot 5x2.5 m = 12.5 sqm, let's make it 15. 432,000/15= 28,800 US$/sqm Cost of a house in Copenhagen (centre): https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Copenhagen https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Copenhagen 47,555.60 kr = +/- 7,500 US$/sqm
- yokaze 6y ago> Cost of a house in Copenhagen (centre) That is for an apartment, not a full house of multiple storeys. If you have four storeys (counting the ground-floor), then interestingly the costs would be roughly on par. I am not sure, how many storeys the houses are supposed to have in Copenhagen.
- jaclaz 6y agoSure it is for an apartment, no matter the stories, it is a "living unit", the comparison is between 1 sqm of something that is covered by a roof, surrounded by walls, etc, and in which you can live and 1 sqm of asphalt/parking space. There is NO market in the world AFAIK where 1 sqm is considered multi-storey, a house that is 100 sqm in plan and is 2 storeys is a 200 sqm one.
- degrews 6y agoSure, but the comment above is talking about "how valuable that space in major city centres is". The opportunity cost of 1 sqm of street parking space is not 1 sqm of "living unit", but 1 sqm of land. If 1 sqm of apartment is worth $7.5K/month, and average building height is 4 stories, that suggests 1 sqm of land is worth approximately 4 * 7.5 = $30K/month (minus value of the building).
- jaclaz 6y agoOww, come on, why stop at 4 storeys? 16 will be 4 times that. My note was not about "opportunity cost", it was about the (extremely high) "rent" that a parking space at 5 US$/hour represents compared to its cost. If you buy a 50-55 sqm apartment/flat/living unit in Copenhagen, you spend roughly 400,000 $, you can possibly rent it for 5%/year, i.e. around 20,000 $/year. If you can manage to extort 5 $ /hour (for 12 hours/day) for a parking space which is 1/4th of area (and is not a building) you get more or less the same.
- buran77 6y agoIf the city charged you based on the value of the land you use, you'd go bankrupt after a picnic in the park. Cities offer plenty of things "for free" (payed by taxes and other sources of income) and you benefit from a lot of those also as pedestrian or cyclist. Drawing the line at drivers seems a bit self centered. I have the feeling you consider most of what you do to be worthy of gratuity. Bycicle lanes and parking still cost to build and maintain but you get them for no additional explicit cost. Ironically (car) road tax pays for some of that.
- Octoth0rpe 6y agoOh my, that's shockingly cheap from my perspective. In the downtown core of much of the east cost US, you're looking at $20+ for a minimum period of 3 hours. On the other hand, in my small city in the midwest during my adult life parking has gone from $.50/hour to $1.60/hour, and people have been outraged by each incremental increase. Edit: noted that $20+ is often for multiple hours, but you regularly can't buy a single hour for $7, you're stuck paying a min of $20 upfront.
- scrose 6y ago$20 an hour on the east coast? Where? The only place I can imagine that is in a parking garage, not on the street. Even the most congested parts of Manhattan that actually charge for parking don’t cost nearly that much, and that’s when they do actually charge for street storage.
- Octoth0rpe 6y agoI am referring to parking garages, apologies. My experiences are mostly NYC (Manhattan, midtown and lower) and Boston's back bay, though in fairness, many places are $25-$35 for multiple hours, which is much cheaper per hour, but pretty annoying if you only need the spot for 20 minutes.
- wolco2 6y agoFinding metered street parking in the most congested parts of Manhattan? I guess it's possible but wouldn't you waste more in gas circling all day?
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>$20 an hour on the east coast? Sounds pretty par for the course for a parking garage in an upscale part of Boston or DC with a minimum charge. For convention centers, hospital clinics and other "people who have to come from far away must come directly here and they are likely to have a situation whereby public transit is impractical" type destinations $20 would be cheap.
- foobarian 6y agoWhat free parking. You mean the one where you have to circle a block for an hour until someone leaves. It's so bad, now when I drive through Manhattan and see an open free parking spot I get a twitch urge to park there immediately. Even though my destination is in Queens...
- scrose 6y agoThere’s an estimated 190,000 on-street parking spaces in Manhattan, with an estimated 3 million parking on street spaces in NYC total[0]. The primary issue is not a lack of parking. Cars don’t scale in dense urban environments. [0] https://toomanycars.nyc/ https://toomanycars.nyc/
- vonmoltke 6y ago> There’s an estimated 190,000 on-street parking spaces in Manhattan How many of those are free, since that was the claim? Nothing in Midtown is free, for instance.
- scrose 6y agoThere's no recent official counts, but the latest data I could find looks like it's about 82,000, citywide[0]. That number is 10 years old, so there is definitely a little room for error. But if the estimated total of on street parking spaces in NYC is at 3M, that puts metered parking at just 2-3% of the total on street spaces citywide. If you were to double or triple that number(which is unlikely), that still means the vast majority of parking in NYC is absolutely free of charge. That 3M number also doesn't take into account all of the 'No standing', 'No parking', sidewalks or bike lanes which have been repurposed into parking by people with parking placards, PBA cards, or whatever other miscellaneous artifacts allow drivers to leave their cars wherever they want with impunity[1]. What I find amazing is that people have an expectation of being able to bring a several thousand pound object that is bigger than many NYer's kitchens, into one of the densest parts of the country that is served 24/7 by public transit and for-hire vehicles, and store it for free. Even tourists with tiny suitcases have to pay to store their suitcase somewhere. [0] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/03/22/new-york-has-81875-metered-parking-spaces-and-millions-of-free-ones/ https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/03/22/new-york-has-81875-me... [1] https://twitter.com/placardabuse https://twitter.com/placardabuse
- thebean11 6y agoA whole lot of it has permanently been converted to restaurant seating. One good thing that came from covid.
- OldHand2018 6y ago> Now can we remove the free street parking from Manhattan? Yes, they absolutely should. Here in Chicago, a residential street parking permit costs $25 per year per car and allows you to park in a specific zone near your residence. 24-hour permits for visitors are sold in sheets that end up costing just slightly more than 50 cents each. The program more or less brings in revenue to pay for itself but makes getting street parking much more fair.
- dmurray 6y ago50c per week or 50c per day is pretty much free by Manhattan standards. Market rate should probably be around 100 times that cost.
- OldHand2018 6y agoIt's pretty much free by Chicago standards too. That's not the point. You can only get the parking stickers if you live nearby! Oh, I forgot to mention that you cannot buy more then 45 of the 24-hour passes per 30-day period. And that's per address, so if you have roommates or a spouse their purchases are all aggregated together.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoParis to harm its middle class as only the wealthy can afford a parking space anymore.
- aminozuur 6y agoI think they merely want to optimize their city for pedestrians rather than car drivers. Having lived in 'walkable' European cities, I can vouch for them, and I think it benefits the vast majority of people living there.
- foepys 6y agoWere you ever in Paris? There is public transport literally everywhere.
- ekianjo 6y agoYeah, and most of it lacks proper support such as escalators, elevators - long flights of stairs are not for everyone. Accessibility matters.
- stdbrouw 6y agoAccessibility matters, that's true, but last I checked private cars aren't that great if you're in a wheelchair either.
- hartator 6y agoYou can literally drive your car in a wheelchair.
- officeplant 6y agoHad a BoyScout leader who was wheelchair bound with a car modified to be driven with only hands. It was a pretty fun learning experience when he let us take it around the parking lot a few times. I'm lucky enough to have a decent job in a fairly rural area and a cheap car that I can easily maintain. At one point I was even a car enthusiast that liked doing modifications. I still think society as a whole should be progressing towards a carless future. Although I'd appreciate it if VR tech was advanced enough to let me drive around in virtual classic cars by that point with feel and smell.
- blakesterz 6y agoI tried to find some actual details on this, apparently it goes back to an announcement in January from Anne Hidalgo when she said she wanted to make 60k spaces into bike lanes. Now it's 70k and they're asking people what should be done with the space? Interesting idea. I assume most of the streets in Paris were built before cars were a big thing, what was that space used for way back then? Sounds like a silly question, but, did people park horses in the same spaces used for cars now? (I assume you didn't "park" your horse, but it seems like more or less the same concept?)
- xphilter 6y agoI always assume it was filled with merchant carts as that’s always how old cities are portrayed in movies. But I honestly have no idea. Maybe there was more “sidewalk” before and the street slowly encroached over the decades?
- gsnedders 6y agohttps://monovisions.com/ancient-road-rue-lepic-paris-from-the-early-20th-century-1900s/ https://monovisions.com/ancient-road-rue-lepic-paris-from-th... has a bunch of early 20th century photos of Paris: some used by wagons, some used by markets, but largely by people walking.
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- bjarneh 6y agoI've driven once in Paris, and people seemed to drive very aggressively. If they never find a parking space on top of that regular chaos, I guess we are going to create some angry French drivers in the "city of love".
- dimva 6y agoMaybe they should stop driving around a major city with world-class public transportation and excellent bike infrastructure? That's what I did when I moved to NYC after a year of frustrated searching for parking.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoYeah, public transit around Paris is a delight, there's no reason for a car there.
- elric 6y agoMight need a boost in capacity. Metro/RER during rush hour isn't all that much fun. Though one could argue that rush hour is a problem that needs to be tackled separately.
- bjarneh 6y ago> after a year of frustrated searching for parking :-)
- quartz 6y agoPeople get angry because there's JUST ENOUGH parking for it to be worth it to chaotically circle and fight over spots. I'd imagine reducing spaces to the point where the assumption is "there is no parking" instead of "if I fight hard enough I can find a space" would actually reduce the number of people searching and driving in the city center in the first place. Similar to the observation that expanded highways don't actually reduce congestion, they just attract more cars.
- corty 6y agoIf there is an increase in traffic after you have expanded the highway, you are going in the right direction. If it is levelling off, you have gone far enough. Then congestion will reduce. The argument that more roads do attract more cars just shows that we are still planning in a state of poverty. It is completely backwards. It is like saying "don't give the starving more food, they'll just eat more, and more starving will beg".
- liminal 6y agoStreet parking is car littering. Put your car away when you're not using it.
- bartvk 6y agoYou seem to casually dismiss the problem of space. Where would people put it away in a European city like Paris? In my city in The Netherlands, new buildings sometimes get a parking garage below the apartments. The ratio is 1 parking spot for every 3 apartments, and next year it'll be 1:4. But new houses don't get a parking garage below them, because that raises the price of the house too much, or so I was told by an architect employed by the municipality. Thus inhabitants get to fight over the available space in the streets.
- OldHand2018 6y ago> because that raises the price of the house too much Yeah, demand will always consume everything that is free, but as soon as you put a price on something behavior changes. Owning a car costs money. When I bought my condominium in the USA, I got two parking spaces in a garage with it. With only 1 car, I rent out the second space. 3 years ago, I could rent it for $350 per month. Now, I can get $200. Around here, the condominium and the parking space are different tax IDs, so you can buy and sell them independently. A lot of buyers choose not to buy the parking space when they buy the condominium. You should assume that when your local builders are moving from 1:3 to 1:4, they are doing so in response to market demand for parking.
- bartvk 6y agoYou don't know city governments in The Netherlands :) The parking spot limit is prescribed by current building codes. Also, owners are not able to sell their spot, as this is also prescribed and further codified into the seller's contract. Do note that I just describe the current situation. I do agree with the fact that the amount of cars/parking spots needs to go down, to make a city more liveable. I don't own a car. I need one, to regularly visit clients and visit family. Thus, I have joined a car sharing initiative. However, it's about equally as expensive as leasing a new family car. I can afford this, but I recognize not everyone can. And I find this recognition is sometimes missing from the discussion.
- 0xB31B1B 6y agoPrepare yourselves. A key factor of for solving climate change will be actions like this. Removing free parking and replacing with bike/bus/walking space is an incredibly high impact carbon reduction strategy. What’s surprising is in basically every area that has taken strong moves like this to remove car dependency, before the action takes place everyone wrings their hands about all the bad possible outcomes, but after it takes place everyone agrees things are much much better with less cars and no one wants to go back.
- aminozuur 6y agoI personally love being in highly 'walkable' areas, and I confess I don't spend much time thinking about the climate. The peace of mind I get from roaming around freely by foot, without worrying about cars or hearing traffic, is bliss.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> highly 'walkable' areas An area does not become walkable because there are no cars. First you have to ensure that journey distances are within walking range. That means having stores, work locations, and living locations all within a kilometer or two at most (not everyone is capable of riding a bike at race speeds every day). Paris, at least some parts of Paris, might have that in place. So too maybe NYC or SF. But a great many places are not setup that way and don't have mass transit infrastructure to convert quickly.
- KMnO4 6y agoNot to mention the climate. There are many places that aren't walkable simply because they are frozen for most of the year. Cars are a tool to overcome that in the same way that air conditioning allows businesses to operate in Arizona summers.
- oblio 6y ago> Not to mention the climate. There are many places that aren't walkable simply because they are frozen for most of the year. Which places are you thinking about? I'm from a place that's quite cold during the winter (-15C some days) plus can have quite a bit of snow. I don't find cold places to be as unwalkable as hot ones. You get used to the cold, the snow/ice are generally cleared after a few days. If anything, walkability is frequently about how a place looks and winter time can look quite nice with all the snow.
- DominikPeters 6y agoArticle says that 70k of 140k parking spaces will be converted. This similar article [0] makes clear that 140k is the number of surface parking spaces. There are an additional 620k parking spaces in underground garages. [0] https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2020/12/03/paris-removes-another-10000-parking-spaces/ https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2020/12/03/paris-...
- reaperducer 6y agoI'm OK with keeping parking underground. I don't like street parking. It's using public space to store private property. I like how cities like Chicago are turning parking spaces into miniature parks.
- emmanuel_1234 6y agoYes! When you look at the price per square meters for housing in Paris, it's madness to allow people to leave their car overnight to sleep for free in the street!
- elric 6y agoYou can't get a car in Tokyo unless you can prove that you have a place to park it. And IIRC Copenhagen managed to reduce public parking spots by 1-2% every year over a number of years. Combined with great public transport, this seems like a sensible thing to do.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stryan 6y ago> You can't get a car in Tokyo unless you can prove that you have a place to park it. An important second part is that over-night street parking is also very, very limited and towing heavily enforced. It's important to have both parts, otherwise you just end up with people getting parking permits through corrupt bureaucrats/etc and just leaving them overnight and the problem doesn't get any better.
- tinyhouse 6y agoThis is great. Where I live the city closed many parking spaces for cafes and restaurants because of covid, to allow them offer outdoor seating. It's been really nice.
- IronRanger 6y agoHow do people receive deliveries at these locations, or transport children?
- adwww 6y ago> Transport children You know you can do this on foot or on bike too right? https://cupofjo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/biking-three-kids-brooklyn-725x483.jpg https://cupofjo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/biking-three-... Part of the idea of a walkable city is that everything you need - nursery, groceries, parks, schools, housing - is within a 15 minute walk. For the centre of Paris that is easily achievable for many.
- yread 6y agoYou don't even need a special bike for 3 kids https://twitter.com/fietsprofessor/status/684397797358067713 https://twitter.com/fietsprofessor/status/684397797358067713
- corty 6y agoWell, and then the police stops you and fines you for child endangerment and unsafe behaviour on the road. I'm not the overprotective kind, but this example is one of extreme recklessness.
- candiodari 6y agoThis isn't even the only problem with kids ... Groceries for a family of 5 you won't be taking on a bike or public transport. Too heavy. Too bulky.
- adwww 6y agoSince the first UK lockdown I've been doing all my grocery shopping for my family of 5 by bike. I go a bit more often than I would have done by car, and I've started buying all my meat separately at a local butcher. But it's amazing how much you can fit into 2 panniers and a rack.
- Scoundreller 6y agoA couple years too late to save auto’lib. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autolib%27 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autolib%27
- 0wis 6y agoLiving in Paris here, I can’t agree more with this decision. The whole city is very walkable, everything is within a 30min bike ride if you’re sporty enough. And the public transport is definitely world class if you can’t bike. However this is very polarizing in France because living space is very costly within the city. And it will not decrease as building any residential space may imply destroying an historical building and disfigure the skyline. Therefore, middle and lower class, needed to run a city like this are pushed to live in the suburbs. Where public transport is not as good as in the city center, so people need cars... I hope this decision will help find solutions to solve this inextricable problem, which might be the challenge of the decade for the city of love.
- buybackoff 6y agoThe number of metro stations is too big, they are so close that taking 1 stop ride is meaningless, walking is as fast. This makes metro very slow. But the number of RER lines is very low. Both are not very reliable - I mean the number of nines in 99.[here]%. I'm not even sure it's above 99% in Paris. Other than the strikes, I've had more problems with metro/subways in a year here than over 17 years in Moscow. Random unannounced station closures, someone forgets things on a station and a line stops for an hour, etc. And the strikes are a bad joke, why are they legal!? With the strikes, average reliability is < 95%. I really like how NYC has local/express sharing the same infrastructure. Manhattan has near the same height as Paris (Peripherique), yet it's possible to travel all the distance with 5 or so stops.
- untog 6y agoAs someone living in NYC I can attest that the local/express lines are great. But I'd kill for 95% reliability! The on-time performance in NYC is somewhere around 80% and likely to get worse with the huge budget issues NYC will have post-COVID.
- oh_sigh 6y agoKeep in mind that the Paris metro has 0% reliability if you need to ride it between 2AM and 5:30AM. Or rather it is 100% reliably not running during those hours. NYC could probably boost those numbers if they could do track maintenance during guaranteed non-running hours.
- buybackoff 6y agoThis is very good, both for drivers and pedestrians. I moved from Moscow to Paris a year ago, and I think Moscow is a success story of fixing traffic. * Make streets in the center narrower, remove 1-2 lines and make sidewalks wider; * Remove parking slots, make the remaining ones very expensive; * No barriers to taxi aggregators or car sharing, just regulations on hours of work; * Improve public transport (new metro lines); * (Optional: pave the sidewalks with tiles (Собянинская плитка). Despite bad jokes it really feels nice vs old broken asphalt) The city became pleasant to pedestrians, traffic jams reduced a lot. Before that I even refused to use taxis, because the price was high, quality was low, and sitting for 1 hour just to move 300 meters was usual. I do not drive myself, but taking a taxi there is no brainer - $5 per ride and much faster than before, without traffic. Now Paris reminds me of Moscow in the 2000s. Often narrow sidewalks where even two people find it difficult to walk past each other, parked cars that make this difficult even for one person (good luck with baby carriage!). This is not everywhere, not on the main streets, but Paris is an old city and there are many old narrow streets. Those should be made completely pedestrian or keep just one line. Before the confinement I lived near Petit Champs/Chabanais streets. They made Chabanais and one part of Petit Champs pedestrian, and removed 1.5 lines from another part in favor of sidewalks. Local activity thrived, children were playing, cafes full of people on the sidewalks or streets themselves. I used to joke that they called Moscow mayor Sobyanin to fix the streets. If they didn't, they should... at least not be afraid of radical measures. And the measures should be radical so that improvements to pedestrians (or taxis, public transport) are big and more people give up on their own cars faster. Biking and scooters are possible all year around in Paris vs just five months in Moscow, so I'm looking forward to more and more of those changes. P.S. Paris should also make public transport strikes illegal!
- forty 6y agoAt first I thought "wtf this this the second person here who want to make striking illegal", then I realized you are the same :) We are a democratic country, people are free to strike, and it's a good thing. It's a bit annoying sometimes, but it's certainly worth it (I'm sure there is no strike in north korea, but I'm happy to live in a free country with that minor annoyance)
- kleiba 6y agoI expect that some drivers will switch to other options as a reaction to this. However, there could also be a substantial amount of cars that as a result will now circle the streets much longer in order to find a spot for their car. There is a real chance this will not have the effect hoped for, or at least not to the intended extent.
- zenonu 6y agoIt'd be interesting to follow the particulate levels in Paris before and after this change occurs.
- parisian22 6y agoLiving in the close suburb (Neuilly/92) and i can't agree more, i don't know the reasons but the amount of people going to pick up their baguette or just go to the dry cleaner by car is insane. When I ask my neighbor why they took the car to do a one km ride to get to the "boulangerie" she was answering because it's more comfortable... My gut feeling is that no matter how many cycling lane or pedestrian they would anyway park on there, the invincibility due of lazyness is unbearable high here.
- hartator 6y agoSlowly forgetting about the 8M of people in Paris metropolis that are getting excluded by this.
- ajdlinux 6y agoFor anyone here wondering more about parking policy, I recommend Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking.
- Neil44 6y agoEven as a lifelong car nut it bothers me how much of our urban space is dedicated to cars. If it hadn’t happened so gradually I think we would have rebelled a lot sooner.
- dirtyid 6y agoNot sure about Paris, it would be interesting to rezone all existing parking lots and structures for mix use / residential to alleviate housing issues in some Canadian cities. Assuming the industry can build fast enough.
- ambyra 6y agoFrance is becoming my favorite country for reasons like this. 75% nuclear, no cars in the streets. Parking in large cities is always a nightmare anyway.
- IMTDb 6y agoFrance is now unable to build new nuclear centrals and intents to close 14 of them by 2035 - replaced by gas (mainly) and wind (when possible). Paris also is one of the most congested city in Europe - which this move is actually trying to fix.
- adflux 6y agoSounds like you've never been to Paris. Its an absolute pit. Especially the banlieus, ghettos with incredibly high crime, civil unrest... Last time I was there (summer this year) we drove around Paris over the highway and found thousands of people sleeping in tents.
- Teknoman117 6y agoThat's awesome. Every time I travel abroad, I'm always in awe of functional public transit (well, before COVID anyways, until that's over I'm staying put. It's not like anyone is itching to allow Americans into their country considering just how astonishingly poorly we've handled it). I'd really love for the pressure against public transportation in the United States to abate - from auto industry lobbyists to the public view that owning a car is a status symbol and that only "poor" people take public transit. My parents spent many years living just outside the SF Bay Area and their town can't get mass transit access because Livermore refuses to have a BART stop in their town because of the "bad actors" (read: poor people) it could bring in. Livermore even went so far as to design all of their new bridges to get in the way of the center-of-highway BART tracks. Anyone further down I-580 Eastbound be damned. I traveled across Japan and Germany completely on mass transit (buses, subways, high speed rail, walking), there were only a few places I would've preferred to have a car for. If I were using it for work travel, I'd much rather take a train and pull out a laptop and do something than have to drive, maybe even just enjoy the view.
- brdd 6y agoDo you have a source for Livermore designing their bridges to specifically prevent BART expansion? I'm a transit nerd and I find this to be stunning, but I Googled around and couldn't find anything corroborating that
- volkl48 6y agoThat seems.....like a very incorrect take? ------------ Bridges in Livermore look to be of similar design to what exists on the section where BART does run, the center posts are not an issue, and there are center posts on every overpass of the BART tracks. Look at the overpasses to the east/west of the current terminus, for example. Livermore's government has been advocating for bringing BART service further, has been frustrated by BART shooting down the extension proposal: https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/liv https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/liv Further, after the extension proposal was shot down, they were the ones that pushed for the creation of a new transit entity to build a connecting service, and have been a substantial portion of what's pushing the project forward. And it's planned to run on I-580 in Livermore, so clearly they don't seem to think the bridges are a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-Valley-San_Joaquin_Valley_Regional_Rail_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-Valley-San_Joaquin_Valley_... https://www.valleylinkrail.com/ https://www.valleylinkrail.com/ None of their actions seem to be transit-hostile to me.
- react_burger38 6y agoIf you are a disabled person living or working in Paris this might put you in a really bad spot. Because Paris' subway system is mostly not accessible to disabled people. (Few or no elevators / escalators in key subway stops). I know this from personal experience when I took my two kids in strollers to Paris. Lugging the strollers up and down stairs was a nightmare. But maybe disabled people have other options like buses so it might not be as bad as it seems initially.
- Hokusai 6y ago> If you are a disabled person living or working in Paris this might put you in a really bad spot. Can you share some link to the complains of the disabled community? I see you position posted quite often, but I have never seen any details and I am interested in there nuances of the situation. I have experience with Barcelona and the public transport was adapted a decade ago. Is that an unique case?
- boudin 6y agoThe position of Paris was to try to improve access to the bus system rather than the metro system. Last year only 3% of the metro network was accessible whereas 70% of the bus network was Source in french: https://actu.fr/ile-de-france/paris_75056/3-metro-paris-accessible-handicapes-adapter-reseau-couterait-milliards_29577828.html https://actu.fr/ile-de-france/paris_75056/3-metro-paris-acce...
- ebg13 6y agohttps://www.tripsavvy.com/paris-accessibility-to-disabled-travelers-1618436 https://www.tripsavvy.com/paris-accessibility-to-disabled-tr... Only one Paris Metro line with 9 stations has elevators and ramps for autonomous wheelchair access. There are 16 numbered lines and hundreds of stations in the city.
- 99_00 6y agoI live in Vancouver which has been building up its downtown core and discouraging people driving to downtown through various measures like taxes, reducing lanes, etc. I used to drive in from the suburbs for work. I spent a lot of money downtown. Expensive dinners, evenings at the bar, or show/concert/sports/event, bought all my clothes, electronics, gifts, office supplies, dentist, some food shopping, haircut, insurance, doctor, RMT, physio, acupuncture. I did as many errands downtown as possible. Now that I'm working from home due to the virus I haven't been back. When the office opens I won't go back. If they force me I'll find a new job where I can work remote. Now I spend all my money where I live.