I loved the contraflow bike lanes in Paris[1]. In Paris, as far as I could tell, every street, including very narrow streets that basically only fit a single car, are still two way for bikes. It was confusing at first since I didn't expect to be allowed to travel against car traffic. It sounds dangerous, but it worked well. Even when a very wide garbage truck took the street as I was biking towards it, I just pulled over and stopped on the side walk so it could pass.
As someone who bikes a lot in Manhattan and Brooklyn, it really felt like bikes were much a first class citizen in Paris.
I love them as an idea. I wish the Barcelona local government would understand the simple concept of contraflow bike lanes on one-way streets.
Instead they keep building more and more two-lane cycle paths on either side of one-way streets, fully segregating bicycle traffic from motor traffic. While they surely believe that makes it even safer for cyclists, in my opinion it is a terrible (and less safe) design for multiple reasons.
Firstly, it continues to encourage the idea that cyclists are second-class parts of urban traffic, who may use the streets when by the benevolent grace of the Barcelona local authority they have been provided with their own mini-street on certain grown-up car streets.
Secondly, having to divide the dedicated bicycle space in two, one for each direction of traffic, increases the risk of bike collisions and makes overtaking slow cyclists more of a hassle.
Thirdly, it often makes cycling from A to B harder than driving if your route happens to follow the "standard" direction of the one way street and you need to make a turn to the side opposite the side where the cycle lane happens to be. This forces you to cross the ordinary one-way motor traffic lane, which you wish you were using in the first place, with the added difficulty that the cars are coming to you from behind.
Finally, it really messes up with the crucial factor of predictability in road safety. So many dual-lane cycle paths on arbitrary sides of one-way streets make each intersection have its own personality, and you'd better hope the drivers you'll encounter are locals who know to expect surprise bicycles sprouting out in the opposite direction on their right-hand side. While one could argue that contraflow lanes also mess with predictability they do not, for the simple fact that traffic continues to follow the standard logic of circulating on the right of the road.
Lack of predictability can be a feature, at least according to Hans Monderman, famous Dutch traffic engineer. He believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road. [1]
From my experience, segregating biking lanes, and having more than one so as to allow passing is a definite plus. Bike collisions can be scary, but it's cars I'm really afraid of.
FWIW, I cycle all the time, often in Paris, Montreal and Barcelona and have strong preferences for doing so in that particular order.
> Lack of predictability can be a feature, at least according to Hans Monderman, famous Dutch traffic engineer. He believed drivers become more alert and cautious when there’s more uncertainty on the road.
I think lack of certainty and lack of predictability are very different concepts, and you want the former but not the latter.
Lack of certainty means you don’t know what’s going to happen because you have blind corners or obstacles (e.g. trees, planters), this requires paying attention and leads to slowdowns because the driver is not confident.
Lack of predictability is its brain-damaged cousin, it’s a drunk driver or a dump truck with an open gate.
I recently moved to NY and I‘m surprised by how bike friendly Manhattan and Brooklyn are. More bike friendly than most German cities (except e.g. Münster) imo
Not pedestrians or runners though. Very common for cyclist's to blatantly mow through intersections and crosswalks like psychopaths. In Manhattan there's a famous local that uses a bullhorn to call them assholes. I've nearly gotten clipped by bikes multiple times. Americans also hardly ever use bell's or announce themselves. And then there's the silent killers on the E-Bikes...I think bikes and cyclist paths are good, it's just the US hasn't figured out how to integrate these things into society so you wind up with anti-social tour-de-france cyclists bogarting through children on tricycles and the general public. It's not a good situation.
My father and stepmom, after trying to avoid them countless times, were wiped out by an e-bike in Manhattan going much faster than the car traffic. Both of them are now frightened to walk in their neighborhood after having so many close calls. I thought they were being a bit hypersensitive given the accident but after visiting this week it’s unlike anything I’ve seen in any other “bike friendly” jurisdiction.
I 100% agree - my point is that cars are easier to dodge in NYC right now with the relative slow speed in their neighborhoods. The e-bikes often go well above 30mph and pay no heed to lights or other traffic signals. I was honestly shocked after having biked myself on multiple continents and having seen much better bike etiquette pretty much everywhere else.
Well my guess is, if it was a car, the driver probably wouldn't be a total wanker speeding, sometimes on the sidewalk, inches away from pedestrians. It seems the main issue is located between the saddle and the handlebars.
I think it has to do with general lawless enforcement increase in NYC, that among other things, leads to people just blatantly doing whatever they want.
I haven't seen roaming mobs of cyclists in other city like NYC, lane splitting through traffic and blocking traffic
Pedestrians should be allowed to walk any which way including stairs and other shortcuts.
Bikes should have dedicated lanes that are always two way.
Vehicles should be the most inconvenienced (one way streets, one turn direction, etc) as “going around” isn’t a major problem.
Designing to minimize interaction between the various forms helps tremendously-if bikes and pedestrians keep interacting negatively it gets harder to get support for more bike infrastructure (even though that’s usually the solution). Just like bollards can keep cars container, steps can help keep bikes contained.
This seems like a far better idea than the segregated bike lanes with stuff in the middle (parking etc), because you can actually see any potential intersection contentions from afar. I'm still unclear how the former is ever a good idea, unless you have traffic signals on every intersection.
My personal experience with riding in 'contraflow' bike lanes is they are often very handy, but can get unpleasant where they intersect with car (or even bike) traffic that's flowing normally. I'd generally rather ride in a protected bike lane (with a curb/berm between the car lanes and the bike, or even bigger barriers like planters or parked cars).
Note that contraflow lanes are a European directive for all places with a speed limit of 30 km/h. I'm Paris they just started marking them.
If you are in a street where it's too narrow to safely overtake a bike without them climbing on the sidewalk, then you probably shouldn't be going much faster than the bike anyway...
It is far safer for a motorist coming from behind to determine when it is safe to pass. It is also far more dangerous for a cyclist to exit then attempt to rejoin the flow of traffic. The only time a cyclist should consider pulling over for traffic is if it would be otherwise unsafe for vehicles to pass.
I do this. I've got a mirror on my bike, I know what's coming up behind me, and I let cars pass when I can. I also pull over when driving on 2-lane roads if there's a string of cars behind me.
So where does the yielding logic stop? Do vans need to stop for sports cars? Do sports cars need to stop for tanks? If you make cycling this cumbersome, nobody will cycle. People try their best to yield but it's best effort.
Indeed, I don't ride my bike on multi-lane roads if I can avoid them, so I'm only talking about roads where my choices are riding in the traffic lane or ducking into the parking lane. In my locale it's pretty easy to get around on neighborhood streets and bike paths, so I'm actually rarely sharing the road with a lot of car traffic.
From an outsider's perspective, Paris seems well positioned for this. It's a dense city, cars don't feel like first class citizens outside of the large boulevards, the Vélib [1] bike sharing system is well implanted (and that's not even considering all of the shared/kick/electrical scooters..!)
Montréal is having a mini cycling renaissance as well. Our mayor didn't let the pandemic crisis go to waste and transformed one of the city's main streets by adding two semi-protected bike lanes [2]. The whole area is stunningly different than what it was before. A telling (Canadian newspaper) editorial on the subject: "Is the war against bike lanes finally over?" [3]
Finally, I personally just joined a group of volunteers (as a tech/developer) that are using DALL-E/AI to generate visions of improved streets in the US! If you're curious / want to join (fullstack and especially css developers are always needed), check out https://transformyour.city/ and the twitter account [4]. The goal is to be a "change.org for urban transformation". Feel free to email me as well.
Berlin has improved a lot too. I spent the whole summer on my bicycle, even with the 9€ monthly public transit pass. The bike routes are just nicer.
They added wide cycling path all the way to the edge of the city, and there are increasingly aggressive plans to keep cars out of the city. At the same time I see more and more ebikes on the roads.
Hi, founder/creator here. You’re totally right, more nature is better. We try to include as much greenery as possible, but it usually has to be grass/plants/flowers. Trees would be ideal, but due to the constraints of inpainting with DALL-E (the AI we use), it’s nearly impossible to add trees without dramatically changing the appearance of the buildings, too, which greatly diminishes the before-and-after effect. Hopefully in future updates it’ll be possible to generate elements that can be “smart overlaid” on top of the existing image.
Please please please do this to London too! I understand the geography is tough and that the haphazard 'planning' evolved organically over 2000 years from its origin as Roman Londinium. Anything is possible with the right will behind it though.
Investing in cycling infrastructure is a magic bullet to help advance three key policy areas for any society. Public health, overcrowded public transport / congested roads and CO2 reduction.
I do not understand why a 2000 year old organically grown city should somehow work for cars but should be impossible to traverse by bike. That does not make any sense. Certainly it would be easier to fit bikes in there than cars. That is, unless you see the space yielded to cars as a void that has been absorbed and cannot be regain.
However, it's really your last point I was thinking of. It's a haphazard city of narrow streets given over to cars. That makes it a hard problem to solve.
The biggest problem in London is the fragmentation. 32 boroughs + the City + TFL. It's planning chaos.
My borough of Waltham Forest, at least the parts inside the north circular, has segregated cycle lanes pretty much everywhere. Nextdoor in Haringey, not so much.
> The biggest problem in London is the fragmentation. 32 boroughs + the City + TFL. It's planning chaos.
It's chaos for just about everything else too, especially when it come to IT. Every council outsources the exact same functions to different companies and almost none of them do it well. It's a collosal waste of resources.
Is it getting done? In germany progress is mixed because some cities are way to cautious to introduce bike lanes. They are sometimes planned to death, little strips of a few hundred meters of bike lane takes years (different proposals, input of stakeholders, revision of proposals, detailed planning and then implementation) so nothing is getting done. I think there's only an noticeable improvement if there's a strong buy-in from the government and the ruling party. I think this is due to forces working against these transformations. To overcome those tedious planning processes the city has to be open to experimentation, which they are not accustomed to so they need to change habits to do this. And every bike lane has opponents, which you also need to overcome to plan the cycling infrastructure (sometimes compromises are impossible, not every street is wide enough to accommodate everyone).
In munich, the city where I grew up in, there's a strong public pressure to create better biking infrastructure. It was put up on popular vote and was the historically best performing yet. But that's not represented in every party and ruling coalitions can be slowed down by forming a coalition with a bike-sceptical party, like the last. But the pressure is growing because there's really no progress yet, it's not possible to evade the issue in the near future.
Is this disconnect present in other countries? I feel like this situation is at least prevalent in quite a few german cities. Which is understandable from a political point of view, to build bike-infrastructure you have to take road away so you will always anger someone and create public opposition.
To ruffle some feathers, yes. And this in the country that always seems to be the first example given: The Netherlands.
Don't get me wrong. Relative to most countries, NL is great for cyclists. Specifically Amsterdam and Utrecht are great for a car-free life, as well as some other cities. Areas close to train stations, connected to any bigger city, tend to do well too.
That's about where it ends. Public transport took humongous hits and roads are being expanded. Why? Because despite everything, car usage is going up and traffic jams are once again increasing. Specifically on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when most people are expected to be at the office. Since public transport is increasingly worsening, most people will simply take the car all the way rather than doing a bit by bicycle and then using the bus/train.
Housing prices make the above even worse (more people have to live outside locations ideal for cycling, PT or a combination), and the government is actively playing into car ownership. I hope I don't need to explain why propping up individual car usage makes building more housing even more problematic (hint: you need to park them, for one).
"But Amsterdam is doing great! But Utrecht is doing great! But I can get from Almere to Amsterdam really easily!" Sure, they are. Now please, overlap Paris, London, or any other big city on top of the Netherlands. Achieving a 100% cyclable Paris is a far bigger achievement than Amsterdam and Utrecht combined. And the writing is on the wall what happens when cars are more affordable and commutes by motorized vehicle are 1 hour a day minimum: car usage continues to go up.
This isn't to be discouraging either. Rather, it's to show that governments can't slack off and take the easy path out. The easy path leads to congested roads, traffic jams, frustrated drivers, mass pollution and a highly inefficient use of ground area.
> Achieving a 100% cyclable Paris is a far bigger achievement than Amsterdam and Utrecht combined.
If I'm not mistaken the goal of 100% cyclable Paris is limited to the city of Paris which has half the area of Amsterdam. AFAIK there's a lot less interest in cyclability in the surrounding areas of Paris and they are somewhat annoyed because a lot of people from there commute to Paris by car.
> If I'm not mistaken the goal of 100% cyclable Paris is limited to the city of Paris which has half the area of Amsterdam
But twice the population.
> AFAIK there's a lot less interest in cyclability in the surrounding areas
Depends on the city, but the majority are also working on making themselves more cyclable, even when the terrain isn't great for it (western suburbs are quite hilly).
Half the size of Amsterdam? I had to look this up but you’re right. The “City of Paris” has 2M inhabitants and 105 sq km. Amsterdam has 0.9M inhabitants and 219 sq km. Learned something new, thanks :)
Paris is brought up in conversations about improving cycling and cycle infrastructure because it has really rapidly increased the number of journeys done by bike. This has mostly happened since the start of the pandemic, and has also coincided with creating many more bike lanes.
Progress is fast (much better than when Vélib was launched in 2007), most arrondissements (except maybe 15th/16th) are convenient to get around, the center has some huge lanes that bode well for the future, and there's roadwork at just about every large intersection that hasn't been upgraded yet.
I was in Paris for the first time in four years this summer, and I have to say I was quite impressed, even by European standards the city stands out as extremely bike accessible, much more so than before (at least the city center). It completely changes the way you see certain parts of the city. I've been many times in the past and returning to the same places now where the area used to be dominated by a busy street now you see the buildings, if you're on a bike or walking on a pedestrian designated street you see them from the angle looking from the center, as they were originally designed to be seen, rather than looking up from under from the sidewalks.
I guess they never learnt. If you never learn then you won't know how to ride. Tom Scott made a video, as an adult learning to ride a bike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7GKK3liv8M
Oof, now that's a story that can be told in many ways.
Short & Simple: I never had the need to ride a bike, I never felt like I wanted to (when i was young), and no one ever decided to teach me. I lived on a 13th floor until I was 10, and after moving to the suburbs, I was already so in love in computers I still didn't care for it.
Longer: I was the prototypical shy and introvert nerd, living in his bubble. Early on I developed an eating disorder which made it so I could only eat very specific types of food, which further led me to be in controlled social environments (e.g. I rarely ate "at school" and always ate at home). Couple this with the fact that I was instantly a "computer, maths and science geek" and terrible at sports, there never was a need to ride a bike. I grew up in Coimbra, Portugal, and the city also isn't particularly prepared for bikes. My parents were also very protective of me when I was younger, and neither of them had a bike anymore, so there really was no reason for it.
Longest:
When I was very young I had some illness that prevented me from eating most food for a while. Somehow, after that passed, I developed an eating disorder whereby I was no longer physically and psychologically capable of eating most food. It wasn't the illness from before, it was something within me that would lead me to refuse to eat or to get physically ill at the thought of eating certain foods, like a phobia. I'm pretty sure if you look it up on the DSM it shows up as ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder). To this day (I'm 29) I still struggle with it, although I have slowly managed to improve the situation (add stuff to my diet) to allow me to be in more social situations and accept my quirks (one such example is the fact I'm telling you this here knowing it will be etched on the internet permanently). To give an idea of the magnitude of the thing, most of my diet, up until I was 18, was baby food (and every kind of crappy assortment of chips/candy/crackers you can imagine). You read that right. If you're curious I can share more about that diet, but I doubt you are :)
This condition made me feel very uneasy in certain social moments, like school trips or lunches or even a simple dinner or going to the movies. Since I couldn't eat what other people ate, and what I ate was utterly weird and bizarre, I simply didn't go for fear of being mocked or looked down on.
I was also always the good grades guy wherever I went. I always came top of the class, even in college (where things were already starting to change for the better). This meant that, especially early on, I was always a bit isolated. I don't have any problems making friends or keeping them nowadays, and even then I always found friends and I was bizarrely a very sociable person (not the kind of "shy kid at the back", but the one that "gets out there and rallies against teachers if necessary"). It's just that most of my interests weren't the interests of my peers. I liked maths, coding, philosophy, psychology...and most of my friends and peers had other interests. I'm not saying my interests were better (far from it), they were just different.
All of this, coupled with somewhat protective parents, meant that even though I always had social groups (including family friends), I was never keen on "going out" and "partying", or "going camping". So I never wanted to learn how to ride a bike. There was one time when I was very young and we were on vacation at an aunt's house where I briefly tried for a little bit, and failed. But that was it.
Nowadays, while I am certainly still a "stay at home 99% of the time" kind of guy, I exercise, I like walks, I like hanging out with my friends once in a while. And, yes, I would like to ride a bike because it looks cool and awesome. I have an exercise/static bike at home and would very much like to pedal the real thing. Hopefully very soon I'll accept my friends' offer to teach me how to ride one.
You asked, I answered, sorry for the long reply :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I just really never felt like I wanted to ride a bike until I was embarrassingly old already. The first time I remember _wanting_ to learn was when I was 19!
I was in Paris a few weeks ago and while I think they have decent bike infrastructure, the car infrastructure was terrible.
In Manhattan (which has 4x the population of Paris) you can get an Uber and go a few km in maybe 15-20 minutes. In Paris it’s an hour+. Sure, stealing infrastructure from cars to give to bikes will make biking quicker, but it’s a zero-sun game. You’re basically stealing resources from people who are elderly, disabled, have families, etc. to prioritize bicyclists. Great for some people at the expense of others.
> you can get an Uber and go a few km in maybe 15-20 minutes. In Paris it’s an hour+.
From where to where? That's not my experience at all.
> it’s a zero-sun game
It's not, given that you fit way more people on bikes that you would if they were driving cars.
Public transportation is also meant to be usable by the people you mentioned (especially families), you can debate whether they currently foot the bill, but staying stuck on cars is not the solution.
> You’re basically stealing resources from people who are elderly, disabled, have families, etc. to prioritize bicyclists.
I am really sick of this "think of the children" argument for why the US needs to persist in this dysfunctional car-centric model, particularly when they're applied to the only part of the country with halfway decent transportation alternatives. I live in lower Manhattan, we need LESS cars and we're going to get it sooner or later. If you don't like that, please stay out of the city, you have practically the entire continent of cities already suited to live your car-centered suburban life.
Manhattan has not 4x the population of Paris. NYC has.
The idea is to make the street accessible for all, so everyone can walk around easily everywhere. The bike lanes are there, so that even elderly and kids feel safe to cycle.
Also Paris being gridlocked has been the case since forever.
100% right. there is also a very weird feeling when you see paris mayor hating so much on cars but loving cabs so much (the g7 taxi, biggest taxi company in france, is a gigantic donator to the socialist party and has been for decades)
at the end her dream is for paris to be copenhagen , a city for the rich people living in the center. if they re healthy theyll bike if they re old theyll have a cab or private driver (just like our dear mayor) and of course lets not forget rich tourists who will ride cabs to go by hermes bags.
this is totally disrespectful toward people living in suburbs and having the need to commute by car
While I mostly agree with your points, I think it's fair to say that commuting by car to Paris proper has been absolute hell for a while now.
Parking is horrendously expensive, and it's not always covered by the employer, especially for people not very high up the ladder (think secretaries and even "higher-up" outsourced personnel).
I can understand wanting to limit cars and push public transit. But boy, do I feel that PT has been on a steady decline for many years. So people get squeezed from both sides. So there's still an absurd number of cars on the road around rush hour.
I can't wait for the new metro lines to open and see how things will change. But I think the main issue is the extreme centralization: every company wants to be in Paris proper or La Defense. There are only so many holes you can dig under a city.
This is the year I finally got an e-bike (a tern hsd). I basically never want to drive my car now. I just did a run to the nursery to pick up 4 cubic feet of potting soil on my bike, and it's incredible to be able to use both the roads and the paths to get there.
As a bonus, cyclists don't have to stop at stop signs in Seattle, so you can maintain 20 miles an hour easily.
All with none of the feeling of isolation and alienation that a car brings.
I strongly encourage folks to go do a test ride on an electric bike. Absolute game changer.
Seattle cyclists don’t have to stop at stop signs, but they do need to yield. Unfortunately the new law didn’t change anything: cyclists still refuse to yield, even to pedestrians, and in general act like entitled assholes. Even the lazy ones on ebikes!
I'm inclined to suggest that cyclists have the right to be entitled assholes (with the exception of not yielding to pedestrians).
On the grand scale of things, cyclists, even the lazy e-cyclists, are actually doing their part to contribute to a climate change solution, unlike the extraordinarily lazy and entitled drivers who refuse to modify their lifestyles to actually do something real to reduce their carbon impact.
Even EVs pale in comparison to e-bikes for the actual contribution they make to reducing carbon emissions (especially since half of a car's lifetime emissions comes from its production).
There's also some evidence that when you account for the energy cost of calories from food and its associate carbon emissions that ebikes are actually drastically better than regular bikes in terms of distance traveled per unit energy used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport.... So your degrading language of lazy ebike riders might be completely misaligned with reality. And that's not even considering the possibility that ebikes enable drastically more biking and less driving since they make the choice to bike rather than drive much more palatable for more people and situations. e.g. I can do a full Costco run on my ebike and cart home 50lbs of product no problem. If I only had a regular bike, I'd be drastically more likely to make that shopping trip in a car.
Drivers are the assholes in city life and should entirely submit and yield to cyclists while bowing to thank them for their service for our collective environment. A service drivers themselves are too weak or selfish to participate in.
In my mind yielding should be based on the relative efficiency of the transportation. Mass public transit should have priority, then bikes, then pedestrians. Cars should obviously be last. Of course this shouldn't be all the time. Even when this is the system in general people should follow rules and take their turn to keep everyone safe.
I would prefer pedestrians > cyclists > tramways > bus > cars.
- Pedestrians are the most vulnerable and should be protected. Also most people are supposedly regularly pedestrians so it seems it would benefit everyone to have them prioritized. They also don't usually form uninterrupted flows like bikes or cars can.
- Then, bikes are very efficient and quite vulnerable.
- Then, I really want public transport to be as smooth as possible and cars should be discouraged (if not forbidden except for specific good reasons), especially the ones that only have one or two people in them, so tramways and bus should always be prioritized.
- Tramways should win against buses, they also don't usually form uninterrupted flows and we want them to be fast.
I believe a really efficient public transport is very important for a working city, and cars are usually the only thing forming continuous streams and are, I think, the only reason we have traffic and traffic lights.
The fact that electric bikes might be more energy efficient than regular bikes is wild, but makes sense. And I've been able to replace probably 60% of my car trips with bike trips so far, and I'm still a fairly novice biker.
It's amazing how much even a small cargo bike can haul.
Something the same weight as a regular bike with a 250W motor doing the same speed is vastly more efficient.
A LEV with accessory pedals doing double the speed with 2kWh of battery is at best a wash and likely requires 1000s of trips to break even on the embodied energy.
As a pedestrian, I've certainly ran into more bikes than cars failing to yield to me, but that's because if I'm at all uncertain, I don't even try to see if a car will yield to me. For two reasons.
1. When a bike does something stupid and dangerous, I expect them to usually not run into me. When a car does something stupid and dangerous, collision is a very likely possibility.
2. The difference in consequences of collision with one versus the other is drastic.
Seattle I find is a few decades away from really getting things right. We’re in North Seattle and the EW routes are sorely lacking. I end up being on a couple arterials that are likely not safe for me. My spouse, however, doesn’t feel safe on those roads and so won’t do the EW trips on the bike. Seattle drivers are getting better at giving space and respecting cyclists. On 8th NW I used to get close passes multiple times per trip, now I have them every other trip.
As a Seattle driver, cyclist and pedestrian I have to say:
* I essentially never feel threatened by pedestrians (regardless of which mode I'm on) (with the increasing exception of the raving mad ones, but that's another problem)
* Very very very rarely feel threatened by cyclists (I've had a few minor interactions with e-bike riders overtaking that have made me nervous, but not really more than that)
* and frequently feel like I'm close to being injured by some nutcase driving a car
YMMV, but two plus tons of metal travelling at 100kph driven by someone who can kill without consequences is simply inherently more threatening
I’m surprised no one has called you out. An e-bike is a motorized vehicle, you should not be in bike lanes. Just like electric scooters and such should not be on sidewalks. E-bikes trivially go 30mph and can carry substantial weight as your pointed out. May as well just let motorbikes at that point.
I don't know about Seattle, but here in Europe, when speaking of "e-bikes" people speak of a specific category that only goes up to 25 kmph (16 mph). Basically, it only goes faster than a normal bike if it's either very loaded or up a hill.
E-bikes that go faster than that are, as you suggest, treated like light motorcycles, and require all the same things: license, insurance, registration, and equipment (motorcycle helmet and gloves in the EU) and are explicitly forbidden from riding on bike lanes.
Ebikes are not motorized vehicles, at least in Seattle. An e-bike requires pedaling to control your speed (it does not have a throttle like a car or motorcycle), it is speed limited (the motor only helps until 20mph, above that you pedal to go faster).
If your vehicle has a throttle and doesn't require pedaling, or the motor provides for speeds above 20-28mph (depending on some factors), then the regulations agree with you.
A bike like the Tern HSD is not legally classified as a motorized vehicle.
I wonder how you measure that? I have a one sentence goal that I think is more measurable - "Every child should be able to cycle to school on car-free paths"
That sets a different tone and yet achieves very similar goals.
But car free paths is a deep standard to meet. Pavements (sidewalks) don't quite make it - you still cross roads. Although pretty safely.
A cycle path that is car free is much harder - especially as you get into the elongated roadways of suburbia and car centric towns.
There is a venn diagram with the Strong Towns argument of density and taxable value, the car-agnostic approach of Barcelona or Tokyo and i think the thin sliver of overlap with the modern world looks like car-free paths. A mobility network that is local and human powered and will engender path-side amenities and opportunities to spring up.
Basically, just keeping the current town planning approach, with long car centric roads and amenities and just slapping a cycle path in is not transformative
> "Every child should be able to cycle to school on car-free paths"
That implies every house should be connected to a car-free path. I don’t see that as feasible. I would aim for having all houses in 30km/hour zones and requiring any crossings of higher-speed car lanes to be on segregated cycle paths. That’s doable.
I was thinking more along the lines of every second street in one direction having a separated bike lane with full right of way at conflict points and infrastructure to manage the cars (like raised crossings and/or lights) so noone would have to cross a road at an undesignated spot more than once to get to it. You can even arrange it such that there is no through traffic on some cross roads (bike lane in the middle and all entering cars must turn right in RHD countries) to reduce the number of conflict points (with cars only crossing the bike lane every km or 2).
But the alley way type arrangement you're thinking of has existed in the past as well (and probably still exists in some places) with a narrow alley enterable through the back yard that cars only enter if they live on that block.
Additionally it's not really a burden for the cyclist to walk for the first/last km or use the sidewalk at jogging pace where that is legal (so long as the sidewalk road crossings are built with similar levels of safety and pedestrian priority).
So, how would you go from your front door to that path? Walking to it over the pavement would work, but I wouldn’t call that a good or even decent answer, and riding on the road wouldn’t be car-free.
Walking up to one block with your kid takes far less time than queueing in a pickup line in your car for two hours, it's not really any burden at all to walk 100m. If you dedicate a slightly larger tiny minority of land for 1 lane every block in the short direction then it requires walking at most one house over (because you either live on the long road, or you're on the short road within one house of either corner, or there's already a greenway or an alley or large non-residential block that can afford 2m for a pathway at your back boundary).
There are also many countries that allow children (or sometimes also adults) to ride on the footpath at moderate speed giving way to pedestrians if there is no bike lane.
I provided a variety of solutions. That one was to hedge against the mental gymnastics I predicted you'd perform at the prospect of a child crossing a road.
If you want to know how it's actually done, go visit a school in finland or netherlands.
AFAIK, what they aim for (and often do) in the Netherlands is what I said: having all houses in 30km/hour zones and requiring any crossings of higher-speed car lanes to be on segregated cycle paths.
Kids don’t walk their bike to a cycle path or cycle on the sidewalk to avoid cars, they enter the street in front of their house (likely after riding on the sidewalk for a few meters, even though that’s illegal. Adults do that, too)
That street either has a low speed limit or has separated cycle paths.
That sounds great. They were already very close to that in the centre / touristy areas 5 years ago. I could take a bike path pretty much everywhere I wanted, from the accommodation, all the 20+min ride to the interesting spots.
But I'm surprised that the article doesn't mention scooters at all (correction - 1 mention in passing). I feel like the bike to e-scooter ratio was around 3:1. They use the same infrastructure and also have significant numbers.
It's interesting to watch. I was in Paris 10 years ago and it felt very car-centric/bike-hostile. Hopefully I'll get back in the next 5 and see how much it has changed.
What's really important about this isn't bicycles in the traditional sense, it's infra that can be used with e-bikes, e-skateboards, e-mini-scooters, etc.
I think the sweet spot is a 50 mile range single person miniscooter (similar to birds, etc), that will be lightweight and foldable and charge quick on 110V. You take that to work, fold it up, charge it whjile you work, use it for lunch/errands, fold it up again, commute home.
The current Birds/etc scooters are juuuust a bit to heavy. I think it's well within the next-gen LFP and sodium ion to produce usable 50 mile scooter that weight 2/3 to 1/2 of a the scooter sharing service designs.
Those should practically be free to any resident of a city in the world in terms of tax rebates or a stipend. I really can't think of a bigger carbon bang for the buck than a 200$ free credit to buy an e-scooter and $1000 for an e-bike+trailer for basic groceries errands.
The portable/foldable e-scooter is a very natural integration with mass transit and intercity as well, while bikes are a lot harder to integrate.
I think the future is much shorter range out of the box, but you slide a supplemental battery when you need extra range.
(This applies to cars too: would love to have a battery pack that slides out for the lawnmower/snowblower/chainsaw and then recharges in the car and gives extra miles of range when needed).
There are some shared electrified scooters in Taiwan where you slide in and out battery packs from something like a vending machine.
I think you don't need a battery swap system. What you need is an aerodynamic trailer for long distances that is an extra battery, or it's a generator for camping/extreme distance.
To swap you just pull up, unhook the old trailer, hook up a precharged one. And it could provide more storage.
This would work especially well for tractor trailers. The power trailer could actively stabilize the truck in crosswind situations, and provide a better aerodynamic profile in the rear.
Edit: to clarify, for cars you don't need a battery swap. Blade scooters / etc where the battery pack can be easily manipulated by hand, yeah, swappable batteries through the wazoo.
I've already seen this in power tools though, every company loves to play shitty games with form factors/plugs/etc to lock you into their tool ecosystem. THAT SUCKS. Your battery for you lawnmower should be usable/interfaceable with your bike. Yes form factors and design can demand specific shaping, but I should still be able to use the same plug between similar tool/personal vehicle applications of batteries.
> I really can't think of a bigger carbon bang for the buck than a 200$ free credit to buy an e-scooter and $1000 for an e-bike+trailer for basic groceries errands.
Assuming people would use those - totally! The risk is unfortunately that people just get them because they are free, and in the end are still driving cars for convenience. I guess one would need some system where the credit is earned via actual usage. You pay for it full price, but for ever ridden km you get credit. You already mentioned tax rebates, and those might indeed be a good way. However those already exist in countries for other kinds of commuting - e.g. if I commute by any kind of vehicle in germany I get a 30ct/km tax discount - whether it's a car or scooter. Picking a higher number for a vehicle which is cheaper to own doesn't really sound logical - but maybe just the marketing effect of it would drive adoption.
They should only be rebated if they come with an unconditional 10 year warranty and no features that depend on software running elsewhere. Otherwise it's just a handout to xiaomi to create landfill.
Also scooters aren't the only compact mobility option. Trifold bikes are about as portable. They also have the ability to emergency brake without tipping you face first into the pavement.
Trifolds are simply too bulky, expensive, and greasy for the main populace. Don't get me wrong, I would like a subsidized push for that too, but the e-scooter seems like the best thing to get everyone going, which is why Bird/etc used that and not e-bikes.
Stats are heavily skewed by different demographics (ie. lower experience, more drunk people), so the real effect is probably nowhere as big as the stats indicate, but without specific training emergency braking or hitting a pothole on a scooter is much more dangerous (even more so than a racing bicycle). Electric unicycles and 'hoverboards' are even more dangerous in this regard.
Also having pedals means you can make the battery a lot smaller a the 40-60W needed to overcome drag at 15mph is a relatively trivial input for 99% of people.
I'd still be behind a subsidy for any vehicle that fits some portability critereon (fits on a train, or maybe an additional amount if it fits on a bus) and has strong evidence of longevity, durability and serviceability (so no walmart bikes, nothing that requires an app and no racing bikes that require expensive parts which change every four years), because even the most dangerous folding scooters (including the illegal 50mph ones) or other microtransit pose far less risk to others than a car. I'd also include mandatory documented standards for consumables (wheels, tyres, chains, batteries, motor controllers, gears, bearings etc)
People want lots of things until they realize it'll take something away from cars. Paris won't be as bad as the US is but it's still there.
I see a lot of cities that measure bike lanes in total length, which misses the mark in two ways:
1. It often includes lanes that are shared with cars. These shouldn't count except on side streets. Basically anywhere where the speed limit is <25kmh; and
2. Focus needs to be given on contiguous cycling routes. It doesn't matter if you have 1000km of cycle routes if no section is longer than 2km and they're only connected by highways you have to share with cars.
Of course Amsterdam is the gold standard here and it shows how much you can do without necessarily taking up more space (eg the intersection design that puts cyclists in front of cars, which is much safer).
In a city like Paris having physically separate bike lanes will often mean taking away parking spaces or lanes of traffic. That's where the resistance will be.
The resistance is already there, it's already happening. Car owners in Paris are furious, and bike infrastructure is already taking away space from roads. High traffic roads in the center have been downright closed and made bike-only.
It is feasible because Paris (the city itself, excluding suburbs) is a very crowded city, where owning a car has always been a luxury. People living in Paris itself who can afford a car, with the associated parking space and everything, are a minority.
People living in the suburbs are more likely to own cars and drive through Paris, but they don't elect the Paris mayor, so their opinion doesn't have much weight.
i ride a bike. i just practice empathy. you should try sometimes. i live in paris and id rather spend tax money to help less wealthy suburban people commute by car to their work rather than make the life of a few 1% rich parisians better. some people live far because they cant afford to live close by their work place, they cant change 2 or 3 trains to go to work especially looking at the abysmal paris transportation continuity of service. they end up commuting for 4hours of their day every day. (it is always late, always canceled, dirty, polluted, thieves everywhere and I commuted for 10 years as a student)
Then fix the trains rather than throwing away more money forcing those rich 1%ers into cars rather than letting them get out of the way. The miniscule fraction of land required for a viable bicycle network frees up more space for suburbanites to drive in than tens or hundreds of road widening projects.
It is physically impossible to have everyone in many areas of paris drive, because after a parking garage and a fifth of a piece to drive in there's no space left.
Empathy is not forcing those poor suburbanites to spend a third of their income on a car.
Empathy is not taking up 2/3rds of the land in the outer regions with car infrastructure rather than housing and productive commecial uses.
Empathy is not forcing sparse development for the sake of landlords' property values.
You should try it some time.
Also the entire premise that the actually poor suburbanites are all driving into the city every day is absurd. Mosstof them would be paying more for their car and a parking spot than their wage.
i dont understand how you cannot see it only favor rich people and landlords…
rich people will always drive car. they will use uber. and you know where they come from? the suburbs. young unemployed people are doing uber drivers. so they will drive rich parisians and chinese/americans tourists on weekdays and on the weekend because they are forbidden to drive in paris they ll commute via the 1 train per hour they get from their suburb and that is only if there is no construction on their line, neither strike, neither canceled trains, nor delayed.
fixing trains is not possible when you have to take 3-4 trains to commute… not even talking about people in villages with no trains. a car costs a few thousand euros. you can even get an electric car almost for free if you are on low income. a 1 year train pass costs 800 euros+ and that is if it covers your lines.
you are crazy to believe everyone would bike. again rich and healthy people bike. poor people dont bike, old people dont bike, sick people or people with a handicap dont bike. you are creating a society for the wealthy and the healthy. its what facists wanted to do. this is not empathy. go out of your confort zone go live in a parisian suburb in 93 and see how is the life there when you need to start your day at night and there is no train. go try to ride a bike when your work is a 4 hours drive. paris is one of the densest city in the world i dont know what you talking abt additional housing.
I commuted via bus/RER/metro from the suburbs through Paris to La Defense for many years and didn't have that experience. It's not Japan but outside of strikes it was reliable enough. Also, the 'less wealthy' folks usually can't afford nor want all the expenses associated with car ownership in France. It's much more affordable to get a Navigo pass.
The more I think about it, the more I realize cities don't need cars.
(ok, maybe if you have a city like LA or Houston that is so sprawled out that anything other than cars is impractical... but even with bikes, those cities would create pockets every 5-10 miles... anyway onto my larger point)
At 10mph, you can cover a lot of ground in a city, get your exercise, pay less for car insurance / upkeep / upfront cost and reduce pollution. It's a win-win-win.
Add electric bikes into the mix and you are set to cover maybe 20 miles without breaking a sweat.
Having lived in Holland before, it's such a treat to be able to bike anywhere. And keep in mind that Holland sucks for biking because it rains all the time (Paris might as well, still oceanic climate). Anything with 2,000+ hours of sunshine per year is in an ideal spot for bikes, but that is A LOT of cities in the world.
Anyway, very much hoping that this will lead to more cities following suit.
I live in bicycle heavy Malmö and a part of growing street wise here is to know how and where to secure your bike. It's really risk mitigation since portable bike locks have limited security. But it works for me and my 2014 Specialized Awol daily driver for everything from city to camping.
But a hugely important factor are well designed bike racks. My favorite is the steel loop that comes up from the ground, like a long U.[1] There are tons of variations but the point is to have a solid point to anchor the bike with your lock. In my case I mostly want to save the frame, but a longer chain and I could probably save a wheel. Gotta balance comfort and security too tho
I believe cities that have attempted some form of bicycle registration system has had good success with reducing bicycle theft, but that does require the local police to actually give a damn about bicycles, which is very uncommon.
Some friends of the family have been buying expensive top-of-the-line MTBs for decades. They said the first thing they do when they buy a new bike is go to the store and pick up a couple of spray cans with suitably horrible colors, and then spray paint the bike until it looks totally janky.
Worked for them so far, none of their bikes have been stolen.
That strategy worked for me in Toronto until the pandemic hit. Dunno if it’s the culture of some people or genuine parts shortage, but had a not-exactly-true wheel stolen (and the bolts loosened on the other that was locked…), a saddle with a crack covered with tape (found the tape on the ground!), and someone tried to tear off my dollar-store bell and destroyed it (my anti-theft screw was a Robertson :) ).
I live in Utrecht, we have tons of guarded bike garages in the inner city, including the biggest bicycle parking garage in the world at the central station with room for 10k bikes (look it up, it’s amazing!). I park my €2.5k bike at home and at the station and have 0 worries. When going to other places I often bring a crappy bike, or park it for short bits.
Electrified bikeshares. Overcomes their tank like structure and performance.
Some cities do have badge access bike rooms, but you have to subscribe to those.
I just have a rusty 12spd that performs well, U-lock rear wheel within the triangle, minimal chain for the front wheel, and an old bike chain looped on the saddle.
I refuse to deal with bike locking rooms, paid or not. Lock outside and oil frequently and I can lock up precisely at my destination.
Maybe a long sturdy chain + good lock to wrap around both wheels of the bike and the frame. When I lived in Holland and used to buy second-hand bikes for like 120 euros, they used to say to buy a chain of equivalent value :-)
In big cities bikes get stolen, it’s always been that way. Of course it would be nice if it were different but it’s sad if that stops you from riding!
The Dutch approach in cities has been to drive something old and or cheap that you can afford to get stolen. It works because the country is pretty flat so you don’t need a fancy light bike with many gears. Paris is pretty flat too.
Lately subscription services like swapfiets have become popular that include maintenance and theft insurance. Through economies of scale, I think it’s competitive with ownership especially for city dwellers without a garage with tools.
I now live in a city with more hills, so I needed a bit more capable bike–I bought a cheap second hand bike with 21 gears. I put some permanantly attached bags on the back which are practical and make the bike look less desireable. I use an axa lock attached to the frame and a separate chain. From day one I accepted it would get stolen at some point—so I feel like I’ve been on a six year lucky streak.
As someone that lives in [redacted] I really hope we do something similar in the centre (around Bellecour). There are way too many cars in a small area it is just ridiculous.
Hijacking this thread to comment that Atlanta (while hot and humid during the summer months) is ripe for extreme bike-ablity. It would involve additional expansion of the beltline bike paths, reclaiming roads for dedicated (and protected) bike lines. Encouraging commuters from the suburbs to park near the perimeter and bike/ebike the last several miles to work.
Atlanta has a dismal history for their bike infrastructure projects that betrays an deep-seated disinterest in them being anything other than window dressing and the ability to check a box on some urbanist dream list. Bike tracks are almost instantly taken over by taxis and the city does nothing about it. If not taxis, then the city will designate them as loading areas for "special events" where special is a weekly occurrence and thus the bike tracks or lanes can't be relied on to be available without contacting city hall first to find out their daily status. Even the Beltline suffers greatly from too many uses being crammed into too little space, making it quite often poor quality for all users.
If Atlanta was serious, they'd convert Peachtree (THE Peachtree Street) through downtown and Midtown into a two lane street, remove as many curb cuts as possible (not 100% achievable but probably 90%), and force turns every couple of blocks to ensure there is no through traffic. Peachtree Street is shady and relatively flat, while the wide, highspeed mostly one-way streets that run parallel to it where the bike lanes have been placed are hilly and mostly unshaded. Plus the bike lanes are filled with debris and storm grates. Push most vehicular traffic off Peachtree Street onto those streets instead.
The space gained by making cars and trucks the minority users of Peachtree could be used for multiple bike lanes, pedestrian paths, small linear parks, and perhaps even a low speed lane for those electric scooters that are so popular.
Great ideas. Yes the bike lanes HAVE to be segregated from vehicles because it's clear that Atlanta motorists have little regard for bike lanes and cyclists. I like the idea of dedicated streets. Bottom line is it has to be more convenient to bike downtown than to drive downtown.
I don't like to cycle but I am 100% in favor of major investment in walk-ability and cycleable. Even if you prefer public transport, or even cars, it much better to operate in a city that is designed around the principles of walkability.
New Urbanism has been pushing this for a long time, walkability is at the core of both high and low density urbanism. An the bicycle is the natural extinction of that.
Great news, but building the lanes doesn't mean it will be cyclable. Paris leadership suffers from myopia when it comes to equating bike lanes with how cyclable the city is. Yes, dedicated infrastructure is necessary to accomplish this goal, but it won't happen without accommodating the needs of others and changing how the city operates.
1) Stop giving carte blanche to taxis, ride-shares, and scooters. These vehicles are allowed unrestricted access, whether legal or illegal, to bus lanes, which tend to double as bike lanes and the unofficial express lane for scooters. They are aggressive and tend not to follow rules that ensure safety and circulation fluidity. We also have Uber Eats and the like for this shitshow -- so thanks to all of you for making it that much easier to order McDonald's at rush hour.
2) Stop pretending like everyone wants to bike. They don't, and that's OK. Real effort needs to be made to get cars off the road for those who do want to bike every day across the city. That means double down on mass transit so that it is desirable. I really mean that: fix the RATP. Gut it if need be. Leverage it until the mayor has to sell her second property -- I don't care. The metro/RER is a disgusting place fraught with maintenance issues, and certain lines at certain hours are not safe.
3) Change the way Parisian and suburban drivers behave around cyclists, which I really view as tandem to point 2 above. Safety is a major disincentive for would-be cyclists. There are any number of corners with painted bicycle memorial commemorating someone who tragically died on his/her bike. Unfortunately, it is the mentality of drivers that they are the rulers of the road, and I have seen this get worse with the pandemic's wide-reaching effects on mental well-being. But we can either get drivers off the road or force them to conform to basic respect for other commuters, which leads me to the following.
4) Actually enforce traffic laws. Paris police don't enforce much of anything, let alone reckless driving or even speeding. Recently the speed limit in paris went down to 30kph (~20mph). Nobody respects this rule -- indeed some commuting cyclists can even break 30kph on a stretch of boulevard. It is the nature of cars to try to pass a cyclist.
Parisians drive "n'importe comment" because they have to in order to get somewhere. There are simply too many people on the road and too much chaos, and cyclists are certainly part of this problem and then follow suit. I have done this far too many times, though I like to think I'm not harming anyone. Getting cars off the road and doing a better job to create a partnership between commuters to get everyone where they want to be is the missing piece here.
What I'm asking for here is everything -- infrastructure, mindset, enforcement -- to be fixed at once, which is not realistic. Drivers will certainly balk at this news, and they are right -- it's just that they are on the wrong side of history. The more bike lanes that pop up and retract space from automobile lanes will create more congestion unless people are given viable alternatives into the city. I would like to demonize them for having sought a better life outside Paris while the urbanites suffer with the effects of noise and air pollution and difficulty sometimes finding a place to walk. There's also a role for discussing telecommuting as a way of reducing the strain on the city's roadways, which is also an enormous budgetary constraint. A larger transition toward a city for its inhabitants is necessary -- not merely more bike lanes. I want to hear that articulated. Give people a chance to live outside. Paris is not what it used to be and building 100mi of bike lanes won't return it to former glory unless we start thinking more about what makes a city worth living in.
this totally and ill add that riding a bike would need a permit or an exam where you learn the driving code. bikers are awful . ibike myself and very often im the only one respecting the code. they just reckless and dangerous to pedestrians
Mostly it makes it impossible to drive in Paris. When I come to Paris from the UK, I now try to fly because gare du nord is surrounded by a gigantic moat of traffic jams. Not sure it is a win for the environment.
Maybe take a local train onward from one of the other forty platforms? By several counts that is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan so of course it’s a busy area.
I wouldn’t seriously consider driving to St Pancras either barring a taxi for an early trip.
Traffic jams are caused by cars. Just look what's in front of you 99% of the time. Cars make it dangerous/inconvenient/slower to use more reasonable (which means smaller) means of transportation. It's high time we stop prioritizing them and giving them 90% of city space.
If there are literally enough people in an area that you physically cannot fit a car with safe following distance for everyone there then maybe forcing them all into cars isn't the best way to solve congestion?
Your statement really confuses me. You say Gare Du Nord because presumably you've been taking the Eurostar. Do you then take a rental car either way? (from GdN or from the airport). Seems like a nitpick to excuse your behaviour: that the traffic is bad in one specific area of Paris (as if it's bad only around there), so it means you'd have to take the plane...
Well, having a few more pieces of the incomplete puzzle, my thought would be, maybe you can take the metro 1 or 2 stations to a less jammed area and then Uber from there. But well, maybe that's out of the question if you can't deal with the "filthy" conditions.
Commercial traffic needs to drive - trucks and vans need cannot easily be replaced with public transport. I live on a busy road in Cambridge UK. At rush hour the traffic is about 50% commercial. I don't know what the proportion is in Paris, but my expectation is that the roads would still have lots of motor vehicle traffic even once you convert everything that can be to bike/public transport.
> At rush hour the traffic is about 50% commercial.
Note that the removal of the other 50% of traffic would easily shift the road from a traffic jam (Level of Service E or F) to a free-flowing road (LOS C). Even if only a fraction of the overall traffic is removed, traffic would easily get down to LOS D.
This is exactly why encouraging other modes of transportation (cycling, walking, bus, train, etc) actually causes big improvements for all road users.
Good question. I'm thinking of morning rush hour because that I did a traffic survey then. I noticed a lot of building trades vehicles. All the trades people seem to want to be at their site for the day by 8.30am. I guess that is so they can do a full day's work before it gets dark (which is at 3.30pm in winter). There is also a lot of food suppliers delivering in time for catering teams to make lunch in schools, offices, cafes etc.
I probably shouldn't have called it rush hour. The traffic is busy from 7am until 7pm on weekdays.
Yes, Paris is quite easy to cycle around. This article, though mostly about plans for new cycling infrastructure, also mentions cycling has increased in Paris in recent years along with the existing infrastructure, some of which is temporary bike lanes added during the pandemic: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/how-paris...
I'm guessing by safe he means crime. And Paris has always had crime and I wouldn't want to be one of those tour-de-france dudes cycling through the north-east. LOL
If you read the article you would see it claims there are almost 1 million bike journeys per day in Paris. Paris only has a population of about 2 million. Counting the surrounding area brings that up 12 million, but however you cut it that statistic means a significant portion of Parisians are cycling and clearly they feel safe enough to do so.
it isnt safe. you need to be careful all the time of many things. many people have serious injuries on bikes in paris. if you know driving rules, have experience riding a bike and a helmet then it becomes less dangerous but to give you an example when u bicycle on a straight line you will be allow to continue and the drivers will be allowed to turn. 50% of the drivers dont understand that you can go straight will they can make a right turn. it is really dangerous and you always need to be careful of cars turning on you. people who tell u otherwise are just drinking their koo. aid or working for lobbies
Just drove to Paris by car, the homeless population is getting big. Lots of tents/ghetto huts next to the roads through Paris. I hope they fix that as well.
In Paris? Where exactly are you driving without frustration right now? You must be a pretty patient person if the current traffic/traffic jams aren't already frustrating you.
Yeah, that's the point. The less drivers, the better. It would be unpopular (and perhaps illegal?) to forbid cars, but they can sure make it incredibly unpleasant to drive, so that people simply give up. I support this.
I love bikes but also have a car which is an absolute necessity. Simple example: picking up a friend or partner from a medical appointment where they're in a state that would be unsafe for them to ride public transit or even a rideshare. They could pay through the nose for a specialized medical rideshare, or I could just pick them up in my car.
Yeah but it's already very bad and will be worse. It's just cars are too big and they will clog whatever space is designated to them sooner rather than later.
As someone who bikes a lot in Manhattan and Brooklyn, it really felt like bikes were much a first class citizen in Paris.
[1] https://nacto.org/publication/urban-bikeway-design-guide/bik....