
Paris’ $160M Plan to Boost Cycling - prattbhatt
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/us-cities-follow-paris-160m-plan-boost-cycling/
======
bertil
Financial incentives do not make sense: having a car in Paris is already crazy
expensive.

During the 20 years I lived there, I cycled everywhere, and I had an almost
weekly accident, always at the same three intersections -- cars running into
stationary bikes, half the time openly on purpose (there is a bolo for a taxi
driver for attempted manslaughter under my name: his plaque was unlegible on
the camera, but him accelerating twice into my bike was clear).

The local police knows those intersections, there are camera monitoring those.
Those are on large axis, and have the largest concentration of tourists (about
50 people waiting at the light at any time of the day).

If you want to make Paris a biking city, no need to spend millions; all the
protected lanes become useless ever 50 m when an intersection shows up and
dozens of car just want to run you over no matter what.

Just ask Police to enforce laws on attempting to kill people and make clear
that a car can be used as a weapon. You do not even need to budget their
presence: they are already there, watching and helpless.

~~~
bambax
I've lived in Paris for 45+ years. The problem with bicycles is that they
don't respect road signs or traffic lights, which irritate the hell out of
everybody else. It's true that many car drivers are very aggressive towards
bicycle riders, but what you fail to mention is that everyone cheers for the
car and not the bike...

Personnally I ride a motorcycle; it was stolen last year and so I used bikes
for about a month. Here are my observations, that I think are difficult to fix
with money alone:

\- pedaling makes you hot and sweaty; you arrive at the office being a mess

\- when it rains you get super wet, much more than on a motorbike, because you
have less protection and you don't carry special rain trousers with you at all
times (whereas they're permanently stored on my motorbike)

\- also, when it rains, if you cover yourself up to avoid the rain, you get
even hotter and sweatier

\- Paris isn't flat! (contrary to Amsterdam...) and some hills are very steep

\- some distances are irrealistic for bikes: I have two clients who are 15km
apart and (to me) 15km on a bike is a fairly long ride

All in all it seems bikes are mostly for tourists (who don't have to show up
in an office at the end of their ride), during the summer (well, the part of
the summer when it's not too hot) and for relatively short distances.

But in the absence of bikes, tourists don't take a car, they mostly use public
transports (or maybe an occasional cab), so I very much doubt more bikes mean
less car traffic.

There is another program in Paris that seems much more promising: Autolib,
cheap electric cars that you can rent for a very short amout of time. Doubling
that with electric scooters would be really great, IMHO.

~~~
nothrabannosir
_\- pedaling makes you hot and sweaty; you arrive at the office being a mess_

 _\- when it rains you get super wet, much more than on a motorbike, because
you have less protection and you don 't carry special rain trousers with you
at all times (whereas they're permanently stored on my motorbike)_

 _\- also, when it rains, if you cover yourself up to avoid the rain, you get
even hotter and sweatier_

I liked your point about people cheering for the cars, but those three are a
bit disingenuous. I come from a country where "everyone" bikes "all the time".
Perhaps we smell (I jest only slightly). But in the face of at least two
countries where people cycle _a lot_ , including for their commute, those
three things somehow don't add up.

The distances: yes. The hills: yes, good point. It's not suitable for every
journey. But sweat? Come on. And not just once, but three times.

It weakens the rest of your post, which is a shame because I think it's a good
one.

P.S.: I'm not going to individually address the points to avoid turning this
into some cycling pissing contest. Suffice to say: people cycle. It's real.
Nothing _inherently_ wrong with it. Correction: yes, inherent problems, but
clearly nothing insurmountable.

EDIT: Can't reply to the guy below, just want to say you make a great point
about showers! Showers at work are not just good for biking; also for running.
And just for showering :P I'd love showers at my office.

~~~
bambax
Sweat: maybe it's just me, I don't know, I didn't ask other people; maybe
other people don't sweat as much, or maybe they don't mind. It's hard to tell,
though, because I never meet people using bikes at my clients' offices.

And I don't see many people on bikes wearing suits; whereas in the subway
there are _many_ people with suits (i.e., "suits" aren't allergic to public
transport).

A thing about Paris that I find is less true with other big cities is we're
always in a hurry, and always late, because we always think we'll be able to
make it. On a motorbike, this results in fines (and sometimes, accidents); on
a bike, the ordinary outcome is arriving out of breath and, yes, sweaty (and
late).

~~~
toothbrush
> I don't see many people on bikes wearing suits

Something tells me you haven't visited the Netherlands :)

------
awjr
When it comes to cycling, a network is only as good as its weakest link.
Seville had an eleven fold increase in cycling by 'simply' installing
protected cycle lanes. [http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/seville-
cyclin...](http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/seville-cycling-
capital-southern-europe-bike-lanes)

The golden rule is to segregate. Give cars, bicycles, and feet their own
space. DO NOT mix. If somebody can make a choice to put their 6 year old child
on a bike and cycle around a city, you've got it right.

~~~
lovemenot
>> The golden rule is to segregate. Give cars, bicycles, and feet their own
space. DO NOT mix.

This seems too emphatic, given the counter-example of Japanese cities, which
have few dedicated bicycle lanes, yet remarkably high rates of cycle usage.

~~~
buro9
Insurance solves that.

The Japanese shifted liability onto larger vehicles. Just as most places will
always treat a rear-shunt as being the fault of the car behind, hitting a
cyclist is always the fault of the larger/motorised vehicle.

~~~
ptaipale
Well, it's no magic bullet. Here (Finland) the insurance of motor vehicles
always covers damages to bicyclists, even when the bicyclist is at fault
(breaking a traffic rule) but that hasn't removed all car/bike collisions.

Having segregated (and physically separated) paths for bikes works well
though. They remove the fear that when you're riding straight, a lorry comes
from behind and kills you outright. Here the paths are usually shared with
pedestrians, and while pedestrians are annoying, they are few (compared to
Japan...) and it works reasonably. Intersections are a bit of a problem, but
the mistakes by car drivers are quite predictable (and being also a driver
myself, I know why they happen), so I can watch out.

------
cataflam
> Paris has a pollution problem. Instead of the smoke from Gauloise cigarettes
> and the aroma of freshly baked bread, the air is packed with smog, an issue
> that got so bad one day last month, the city forcibly halved traffic by
> allowing only cars with odd-number plates to drive.

Of course this could have nothing do to with Germany phasing out its nuclear
power plants and having to reopen coal power plants instead.

They massively increased the share of solar and wind in their energy
production, but still need more traditional methods of power generation to
cover when those 2 are not providing energy, hence more coal [1].

And coal is incredibly polluting. See [2] for example for CO2 emissions :

> In July 2014, a group of NGOs published a study on the EU’s 30 worst
> CO2-emitting thermal power plants. German power stations featured six times
> among the 10 dirtiest.

CO2 is not the problem for city pollution of course, it's the rest of the
small particulate matter that is.

[1] [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-
energy...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-energy-
transition-explained-in-6-charts)

[2] [http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/24/coal-casts-cloud-
over-g...](http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/24/coal-casts-cloud-over-germany-
s-energy-revolution)

~~~
sveme
Sorry for being harsh, but suggesting that German coal power plants are
responsible for Paris smog is just bollocks, Paris being around 300km from the
French-German border. There are ample reasons to criticise the "Energiewende",
but Paris smog is definitely not one of them.

~~~
jellicle
Toronto, Ontario is 400km from Ohio, and gets smog from Ohio's coal plants all
the time. The studies suggest about half of Toronto's air pollution is due to
U.S. power plants.

I have no idea what the reality is of smog in Europe, but your off-hand
dismissal of this based on the perceived distance between the source and
recipient of the pollution is entirely wrong.

~~~
ptaipale
However, the prevailing wind in Europe is from southwest. Paris doesn't get
smog from the Ruhr, mostly it is vice versa.

Of course, occasionally the wind is the other way round, but overall, any bad
air in Paris is due to Paris.

------
aout
Most of the big avenues in Paris already have separated bike lanes on either
the sidewalk or the bus lane but the road (for regular cars) still takes 80%
of the space. The goal here is to leave more space to pedestrians (like on the
river front) and reduce the "car space" in the city.

The cost of public biking in Paris (3$/month) is very very very small when you
consider the cost of having a car (at least 200$/month) or taking the subway
(around 70$ / month).

One problem though, Paris has some hills and people tend to avoid these areas.
Using your legs is great yes, healthy etc... but hey, we'd like electric bikes
:)

~~~
smcl
Genuine question: how did you come up with $3/month? Is that a rough estimate
of expenses (maintenance etc) over a year divided by 12, or is there some
Paris bike permit required?

~~~
conradfr
It's 29€ or 39€ for a yearly subscription to public bikes, I would guess he's
referring to that : [http://en.velib.paris.fr/Subscriptions-and-
fees](http://en.velib.paris.fr/Subscriptions-and-fees)

------
ptaipale
It's good to be ambitious, but the Paris goal of increasing share of trips
from 5 % to 15 % in five years sounds somewhat unrealistic. I'd be surprised
if you can double the numbers in five years.

In Helsinki, the share of trips made by bike is 11 % and the goal is to reach
17 % by 2025, in ten years time. I think even that is ambitious but not
entirely unfeasible.

(However, it must be said that there seem to be vary many different ways to
calculate the share of trips done on bike vs. other ways, and if you change
the way you make statistics, you can of course indicate huge progress...)

------
fungi
Sounds like a utopian dream compared to here in Sydney where the roads
minister is ripping up our miniscule cycle network and replacing it with "part
time" cycle ways and loading bays.

------
cowardlydragon
The bikeshare should refund money from your annual fee as you use it.

Bikes on local trains is huge.

[http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/if-an-electric-
bike-i...](http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/if-an-electric-bike-is-ever-
going-to-hit-it-big-in-the-us-its-this-one/375167/)

------
iakh
The weather is too poor here to make this a realistic solution. We try to
velib as much as we can, but you can only reliably bike maybe 4 months out of
the year if you're lucky. The remaining days are either too wet or too cold or
both. No amount of bike lanes or police enforcement can change the generally
miserable weather of Paris.

~~~
toothbrush
I think it's safe to say the weather in Amsterdam or Copenhagen is at least as
bad as in Paris. (disclosure: i didn't downvote you)

------
acd
I asked how much of cell phone that can be recycled, no one has answered the
question yet. Thats a bit scary, don't look under that stone and ask that
question kind of feeling.

How much of electronics is recycled, how much can be recycled?

