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Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

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41–50 of 218 posts

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#41

I don’t get how you can make bicycling your only form of transportation, even if the bike travel infrastructure and parking is adequate. When I bicycle, even for a short amount of time like 15 minutes, I sweat, and end up a stinky wet mess at my destination. Especially in the summer. My shoes and pants get dirty from the road and my hair gets wet and messed up especially if it’s raining. So if I’m going anywhere with…

An e-bike changes this math considerably.

You get:

1. Faster trip, so less time to sweat

2. Faster speed, so more cooling, so less sweating overall.

3. Less exertion, so less generated heat by body.

Although if you live in a hot AND humid climate, I'm afraid there's just not much you can do. There are physical limits after all.

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#42
The city started during the pandemic and has moved toward making these bike lanes more permanent. There is also a deep dissatisfaction with public transportation here. While comprehensive throughout the entirety of the Paris metropolitan, it is expensive, unreliable (especially the regional RER trains that connect the inner city to suburbs and vital for commuters), often filthy, and at times unsafe (depending on the line). The other issue is the traffic above ground. I've heard reports that there are fewer cars, but it doesn't feel this way. If anything, there are more delivery trucks.

So while infrastructure investment has helped (not to mention some nice tax write-offs and discounts on e-bikes), there are some other issues here. I like bikeable Paris a lot, but the ecological goals of this city's mayor demand much more investment in the city and regional authority's mass transit. It is unreasonable to expect commuters to bike in from many kilometers away. Biking inside Paris upon arrival should be the desired end result. Ultimately to get the cars off the roads, people need to feel good on mass transit so that they want to use it more than a car, and the impression I have right now is that many people are biking because it's better than sweating in filthy, delayed trains.

To that effect, riding a bike is and should be a delight -- not a mere alternative to defunct metro transit, but I know many who are terrorized or disgruntledby biking in Paris. To solve this intractable issue of getting more riders, cars have to be removed from the streets which need to be progressively closed to make room for more bike infrastructure. These kinds of plans well face strident criticism and backlash from the suburbanite commuters. In that vein, I am totally for the Grand Paris Express plan. Make Paris great for Parisians again!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#43

I don’t get how you can make bicycling your only form of transportation, even if the bike travel infrastructure and parking is adequate. When I bicycle, even for a short amount of time like 15 minutes, I sweat, and end up a stinky wet mess at my destination. Especially in the summer. My shoes and pants get dirty from the road and my hair gets wet and messed up especially if it’s raining. So if I’m going anywhere with…

E-bikes solve this, they're already basically mandatory for cities with a lot of grade. Personally I run 100% of my errands on a jack rabbit e-bike [0] which isn't even really a bike (no pedals) but a sit down scooter.

[0] https://jackrabbit.bike/

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#44

I don’t get how you can make bicycling your only form of transportation, even if the bike travel infrastructure and parking is adequate. When I bicycle, even for a short amount of time like 15 minutes, I sweat, and end up a stinky wet mess at my destination. Especially in the summer. My shoes and pants get dirty from the road and my hair gets wet and messed up especially if it’s raining. So if I’m going anywhere with…

I think the key here is mostly to go slow. Right now,if I'm bike commuting I need to keep up with cars or risk getting rear ended or tailgated or shouted at. Setting things up so you don't have to worry about cars while on your bike means you can bike at a more reasonable speed instead of 25mph.

Think beach cruiser bikes not guys in spandex on race bikes

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#45
post #3

Using '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.

I'm sure some people do but I know on HN specifically in most threads around american urban cycling you will see some extremely clear-eyed car advocates. They (rightly) recognize that better prioritizing cycling requires, to some extent, fewer resources allocated to car use and oppose it on those grounds. Some of it is ignorance but a lot of it is not, and a continuing car-centric world is just their well understood…

In 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.

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#46
It must also has be taken into account that driving has become annoying to the point that many people from suburbs don't come anymore to Paris for shopping, theatres, exhibitions, ... and many living inside or nearby are really annoyed by the public transports which are dirty, not on time, too crowded, beggars every few minutes, ... so biking is like a forced solution that helps with some things but isn't always a choice of preference. It's easier to see this in the winter, which is not cold/wet enough in Paris to make cycling difficult, but there are clearly much less cyclists then.

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#47
post #36
post #5

While its true that compared to 10 years ago cycling is much better served by the infrastructure, there are still large challenges ahead, and I would mention only two of them: - many intersection are very poorly signaled if you are riding a bike (not sure for cars is much better) and old bike lanes setups put you in weird situations (ex: bike lane changing from "outside" of the road to "inside" of the road, without c…

> 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 mentione…

> 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?

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure some people do but I know on HN specifically in most threads around american urban cycling you will see some extremely clear-eyed car advocates. They (rightly) recognize that better prioritizing cycling requires, to some extent, fewer resources allocated to car use and oppose it on those grounds. Some of it is ignorance but a lot of it is not, and a continuing car-centric world is just their well understood…

Almost 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.

When 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.

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure some people do but I know on HN specifically in most threads around american urban cycling you will see some extremely clear-eyed car advocates. They (rightly) recognize that better prioritizing cycling requires, to some extent, fewer resources allocated to car use and oppose it on those grounds. Some of it is ignorance but a lot of it is not, and a continuing car-centric world is just their well understood…

Almost 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.

It's a real "you hate traffic without realizing that you _are_ traffic" situation.

Re: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

#50
post #33

Title is misleading... the source Le Monde article states that use of certain bicycle paths has doubled (or tripled) in certain places , as investment has gone into improving these paths. That's great, but kind of obvious that if you build out dedicated bike lanes, cyclists are more likely to prefer them to alternate routes.

Based on some videos, some paths usage has way more than doubled. It's getting super messy.. a sad side effect of popularity.
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