14 ms·
Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment
- adrianN 3y agoGiven 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.
- milkytron 3y agoIt 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.
- davidw 3y agoUsing 'induced demand' for good - I love it. 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.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoI'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.
- gambiting 3y agoThe thing that is somewhat counterintuitive is that countries with amazing cycling infrastructure are also very good for drivers because you just get less congestion on the roads. There are some great youtube videos about it - how driving across Amsterdam takes less time than covering 3 miles in LA, that kind of thing. Like, if you like driving cars, a place like the Netherlands is great for it because you spend more time actually driving and not standing in traffic(because most people are out on bikes and not in cars).
- dublinben 3y agoEven as a driver, if you think about the second-order effects of getting more (other) people out of their cars, it becomes obvious that it would improve traffic for you. An enlightened self-interested driver would want to increase investment in alternatives to driving, since that is the only proven solution for congestion. As a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
- milkytron 3y agoGetting people out of cars also reduces tax spend on road costs. Bike infrastructure lasts longer and is cheaper to maintain than a road, which can result in improved municipal finances.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoAlmost every additional cyclist is one less car. And since bicycle infrastructure is a lot cheaper than vehicle infrastructure, spending a dollar on bicycle infrastructure can improve conditions for car drivers more than spending that dollar on car infrastructure.
- the_snooze 3y agoWhen I bike and have to wait at a busy crossing alongside other cyclists and cars nearby, I take note of how vastly different the two situations are. Each car (often an SUV or a pickup truck) typically only has one passenger. Each bike also typically only has one passenger. But in the space of one car at a stoplight, you can fit 3 to 5 cyclists.
- IllIlIIllI 3y agoIt's a real "you hate traffic without realizing that you _are_ traffic" situation.
- pchristensen 3y agoIn the later chapters of The Power Broker, there are stories of transit advocates and driving advocates begging Robert Moses to preserve right of way for transit when building the Van Wyck Expressway and the Long Island Expressway. The expected traffic demand (~9k cars/hr) the day they opened was far beyond the capacity (1500 cars/hour/lane * 3 lanes). A transit line takes about the same space as one traffic lane, with a capacity of 30-40k/hour. Without provision for transit, the road wouldn't even be a good road for drivers, because everyone with no choice but to drive would overcrowd the road and create the congestion the road was supposed to alleviate. This is setting aside all other considerations - urban design, air pollution, land and property value, tax revenue, health, neighborhood cohesion, etc. Roads without provision for transit and non-motorized travel don't even do the job of a road well.
- throw0101d 3y ago> Using 'induced demand' for good - I love it. 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 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- timy2shoes 3y agoMy 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.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoI'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.
- favflam 3y agoI 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
- a_gnostic 3y agoThe first US asphalt roads were built by cycling clubs (1). 1) https://www.vox.com/2015/3/19/8253035/roads-cyclists-cars-history https://www.vox.com/2015/3/19/8253035/roads-cyclists-cars-hi...
- lkbm 3y agoI biked for transportation (and fun) for years and it was great. In 2022 I moved and had no bike for eight months and hurt my back ~four times in that period. I got a new bike about a year ago and have had no back pain since (until randomly yesterday, but I'm 41, I guess it's expected that it'll happen occasionally). Biking doesn't seem like a back exercise, but you are using your core and flexing it a lot, and for longer than you would on any standard core exercise. Building exercise into your day to day life is incredible valuable. If you're lucky enough to be in a place where biking is viable, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's not for everyone, but given the right situation, I suspect the majority of people would find it a positive change to start biking more. (I suspect this is true for a lot of exercise, but biking has the benefit of being a productive workout—similar to chopping wood vs. lifting weights, except few of us need much wood chopped.)
- JAlexoid 3y agoCycling is fairly heavy on your lower back and the need to balance yourself means that your core gets a huge hit a lot of the time. Unless you have one of those lounger bikes, you're getting an exercise that hits almost everything below your ribs.
- vladms 3y agoWhile 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.
- consp 3y ago> 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.
- throwup238 3y ago> And that was in the often mentioned cyclists Valhalla. I’m confused by this analogy. Are cars Valkyries in this case, taking the souls of bikers off to Valhalla?
- consp 3y agoProbably lost in translation, should have phrased differently. A <something> Valhalla is seen as an alternative phrasing to <something> paradise but probably does not translate well into English and might be a specific cultural thing (and not even Nordic in use, since I'm talking about the Netherlands). It has a bit more "promised land" tone than paradise without the baggage of a large faith behind it.
- throwup238 3y agoNo that part translated, I was just under the impression that one only got to Valhalla by dying in glorious battle.
- ckemere 3y agoHaving 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?
- EricAski 3y agoI would say there is a 80/20 ratio between mechanical and e-bikes. The regional council offers ebikes for 40€/month[1] which boosted ebike adoption. The service is very popular with both office workers and food delivery workers. [1]: https://www.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/en/the-network/mobility-services/bikes/veligo-bike-rental-veligo-location https://www.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/en/the-network/mobility...
- beej71 3y agoOn that topic, I ride a regular bicycle but I love that there are so many e-bikes on the roads these days. The city where I live is blessed with pretty good weather for a lot of the year and e-bikes enable people who live out towards the edge of town to get downtown with relative ease. Even though they lack some of the benefits of a simple bicycle, they drive the same infrastructure development that I need.
- plants 3y agoI imagine that’s just about the starkest within-US move you could make with regard to bike friendliness. I once made the mistake of visiting Houston without a rental car, and it was bleak. Welcome to NYC!
- wnolens 3y agoI bike in Manhattan and it's a dream. A literal grid of 20-30mph traffic, with a greenway up and down in case you want to avoid traffic entirely.
- gniv 3y agoI'm in a Paris suburb. Lots of e-bikes and lots of electric scooters.
- 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kindatrue 3y ago"I really hope US cities head in this direction" 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
- twoWhlsGud 3y agoDone 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.
- beppuboy 3y ago+100...I love driving and will miss it with autonomous cars but I like being able to ride my bike without being nearly killed in the city every week. Autonomous cars (assuming they're trained to deal with bikes) would be a massive benefit I'm keeping my fingers crossed for.
- trgn 3y agothe aspirational future of AI-traffic is kei cars and vans puttering around. Hope to see it in my lifetime still.
- HEmanZ 3y agoI 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.
- lotsoweiners 3y agoThose cities you mentioned already have European style urban infrastructure. In my opinion the big difference is that the drivers in the European cities seemed crazier than their US counterparts.
- VeejayRampay 3y agobut 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
- h1fra 3y agoPeople 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.
- mattcantstop 3y agoThat'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!
- mupuff1234 3y agoUS cities should probably first start focusing on pedestrians.
- al_borland 3y agoWith the way many areas of the US are laid out (being car-centric), a bike bias may be needed. Bikes to get to where you want to go, then once you’re there, walk around. Currently, a lot of people need to drive to get to an area they would walk. Everything is very spread out.
- ThunderSizzle 3y agoI can walk with my toddler and infant and post c-section wife. I can't bike ride with them. Of course, I can also drive almost anywhere with them.
- al_borland 3y agoThere are various solutions for biking with an infant, and from what I can tell, a c-section takes 6-8 weeks for recovery. No one ever side bikes should be the only possible form for transport. Use the car for 2 months while your wife recovers, for the trips she needs to take. If you live in a walkable area, go for a walk. A bike path is easier to drop in than rebuilding entire cites and relocating the entire population around those walkable areas. Bike paths take years, consolidating urban sprawl would take decades, even if the political will existed.
- richrichie 3y agoThe 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.
- boredpeter 3y ago[dead]
- ryandrake 3y agoI 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?
- random_kris 3y agoAfter biking for some months a 15min ride shouldn't get you too sweaty
- Tade0 3y agoWhy should that be the case? The amount of sweat is only correlated to the amount of heat generated. Only way to counter sweating is to dress appropriately and/or ride slower.
- offsign 3y agoTitle 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.
- agumonkey 3y agoBased on some videos, some paths usage has way more than doubled. It's getting super messy.. a sad side effect of popularity.
- kfarr 3y agoEven 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.
- al_borland 3y agoI think a lot of the push back in the US against bike lanes comes from bad bike lanes and a lack of a wholistic solution. In most places I’ve been, the city will paint a line on a road where cars are going 50mph and call it a bike lane. There is no chance that will get me to start riding a bike. All it does it make the road worse for cars, by making it more narrow, or more likely, losing a lane. One place I lived did get a protected bike lane going right in front of the building. I still didn’t use it, as it wasn’t really connected to anything else. Everywhere along the route I’d go, I’d simply walk. It wasn’t that far. Everything has to start somewhere, and I hope they build more, but so far drivers see problems without any payoff. The worst of it was during the pandemic. There were construction barrels all over the city. It was hell to get around by car. I figured they were preparing for construction and ripping up the road. I found out a year later that the barrels were meant to create temporary protected bike lanes so people could get out and ride around to places during the pandemic. Cool… if there has been a single sign to tell people that’s what it was. Instead, it just made drivers mad, and the lanes weren’t used, because people didn’t know what they were for. More space taken from cars with no payoff in terms of reducing traffic through increased biking. I want good bike infrastructure, but the plans and efforts I keep seeing still don’t seem that good. The useful paths are dangerous and the safe paths aren’t that useful.
- zahma 3y agoThe 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! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express
- gregoriol 3y agoIt 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.
- sloowm 3y agoYou describe Paris as if it's a shopping/entertainment center for the suburbs. It also looks like you're implying that Paris needs the economic activity generated by the suburbs. For that I would investigate what a suburb is by definition.
- gregoriol 3y agoIn the 70s-90s, it was! A lot of shops and movie theatres have closed in some areas like Champs-Elysées, Montparnasse, Saint-Germain, ... where people used to come by car from suburbs on the week-ends because they could, because it was practical, because they could park. Places for shopping and entertainment have been created in the suburbs since then, which is a win for the suburbs but not for Paris which has become depressing.
- trgn 3y agoit's a win win win!
- tin7in 3y agoCovid really accelerated this. Friends visiting in Paris are also surprised how fast the city changed in just 2-3 years.
- darkamaul 3y agoAs 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.
- bsaul 3y agoThe right bank is going to be really overcrowded this spring, for sure. Left bank have wider roads and less bikes, but right bank is insane. It's now up to the point that i rather wait for commute hours to be over before i take my bike to that side.
- Retric 3y ago> 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.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y agoWay less noise though
- Retric 3y agoSure, that's fair.
- vanilla_nut 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoIsn't it rather thanks to the banning of electric scooters?
- frozencell 3y agoThat’s written by gpt (bustling, at the heart of, …)