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Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to investment

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

#161

Post by SamBam »

lupusreal wrote: post #143
Retric wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pedestri…

Seconding this. American cyclists are extremely rude to pedestrians. Whenever somebody brings this up, cyclists dismiss it by pointing out that cars kill more pedestrians than bikes. Well that's certainly true, but I've never had cars yell at me for walking on the sidewalk or over a crosswalk, while cyclists have hurled abuse and (deliberate) near misses at me more times than I can count.

> but I've never had cars yell at me for walking ... over a crosswalk

You don't live in Boston, I see.

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

#162

Post by ThunderSizzle »

doctor_phil wrote: post #69
kindatrue wrote: post #15

"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

I don't get the American fixation of cars. Isn't public roads a mild form of communism?

Freedom of movement. Cars represent freedom of movement akin to a horse with a trailer, except you have an engine instead of a horse.

I dont think Americans care for the current road monopoly states have, or the monopolistic tolls and enforcement.

The idea of freedom of movement isn't really a European-centric ideal - its more uniquely American and derived from being a nation derived from those escaping injustices of Europe and searching freedom and liberty.

With the history of Europe being based in serfdom - peasants being forced to work their lord's land for protection - the idea of freedom of movement never really seemed to be of importance.

Those who deemed it important probably emigrated from Europe to America.

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

#163

Post by lotsoweiners »

HEmanZ wrote: post #52
kindatrue wrote: post #15

"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

I 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…

Those 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.

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

#164

Post by lucsky »

darkamaul wrote: post #63

As 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, espec…

> cyclists are less annoying than drivers

I had to laugh out loud at this, please define "less annoying".

As a daily cyclist in Paris my very own statistics say that about 95% of them (yes, that's NINETY FIVE percent) are either color blind, suicidal or willfully ignore the most basic rule, aka red lights. And yes that include M12 signs which have arrows indicating directions in which running the red light is authorized, that is ignored as well. Breaking these 95% down into categories, the vast majority would be delivery guys - you can easily imagine their "excuse" - and (usually young) idiotic morons on bikeshares (Vélib, Dott, Lime, etc) who therefore do not own the bikes and therefore care even less. I'm especially angry at parents on cargo bikes who run red lights with kids with them, this is not only suicidal, it's borderline criminal. But, you know, they are saving the planet, or something.

So I kinda disagree with the "less annoying", cyclists in Paris are the reason why everybody in Paris hates cyclists.

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

#165

Post by ThunderSizzle »

digging wrote: post #83
offsign wrote: 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.

> kind of obvious that if you build out dedicated bike lanes, cyclists are more likely to prefer them to alternate routes. That's not obvious at all; it's not even true. It's not uncommon in US cities to install long, wide bike lanes on major roads which see close to 0 daily users. Significant problems include: - complete lack of physical barriers between cars and bikes - bike lanes terminating at dangerous roads - d…

While those are "dedicated bike lanes", it wasn't infrastructure built for bikes. Typically those are existing road safety shoulders converted to a bike lane.

I dont count that as dedicated bike infrastructure.

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

#166

Post by digging »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #165
digging wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kind of obvious that if you build out dedicated bike lanes, cyclists are more likely to prefer them to alternate routes. That's not obvious at all; it's not even true. It's not uncommon in US cities to install long, wide bike lanes on major roads which see close to 0 daily users. Significant problems include: - complete lack of physical barriers between cars and bikes - bike lanes terminating at dangerous roads - d…

While those are "dedicated bike lanes", it wasn't infrastructure built for bikes. Typically those are existing road safety shoulders converted to a bike lane. I dont count that as dedicated bike infrastructure.

If your definition of bicycle infrastructure excludes anything insufficient to facilitate increased usage, then yes we can agree it is obvious that building such will facilitate increased usage, but that's a useless statement.

But if we talk about all bicycle infrastructure, which is a conversation useful to have, it is clear from the multiple issues I pointed out (not limited to lack of physical separation) that simply building bike infrastructure ad-hoc and without holistic change is not useful.

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

#167

Post by littlestymaar »

h1fra wrote: post #19

People 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.

I concur: I used to ride a bike in Paris during the mid 2010 and I eventually left the city in 2017 in part because I was fed up with the difficulty of the endeavor. And now everytime I travel back there I'm amazed at how far it's gone already, and the number of cyclists keep rising every time!

This year I started seeing a significant amount of cargo bikes, the things that I had only seen in the Nederland before.

I don't know when the growth will stop, but it's already beyond what I could even imagine back then.

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

#168

Post by NegativeLatency »

kindatrue wrote: post #15

"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

3) A technical solution to a societal problem

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

#169

Post by prmoustache »

alistairSH wrote: post #151
chopsuey5540 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Paris, most people who are now biking are people who would have taken public transportation before, so the amount of cars on the roads is roughly the same as before.

Do you have a citation for that? Is car ownership and usage for city residents really the same?

Many cars in Paris are driven by people commuting to Paris from outside. There is a real fracture between suburbans (who don't vote for those changes happening in Paris) and city residents who votwd for them.

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

#170

Post by HEmanZ »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #163
HEmanZ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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…

Those 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.

That’s interesting. I’m a born and raised American, but I lived in two different European countries (Oslo and Geneva) between 2014 and 2017. During that time I traveled all over Western Europe and the near east for fun and business, and besides 2020-21 I have vacationed in Europe once or twice per year when not living there. Old Soviet Europe drives pretty crazy, but other than that I have not encountered anywhere else in Europe with drivers as crazy as the US.

They have very different norms in Europe that Americans might confuse as crazy but are actually better habits IMO. E.g drivers in Florence and Rome followed few rules and basically drive by the “if it fits, it fits” manta. But they were always keenly aware of pedestrians and other drivers. They drive very light cars in streets where they can’t get above 15 mph. Even if they do get into more fender-benders, I’m not very concerned about a fiat hitting my car at 15mph. In short, their way of driving is safer and I feel much more comfortable around it.

Americans on the other hand seem to prefer deadly speeds in giant vehicles even in neighborhoods. My current neighborhood regularly sees F150s and King Ranches going 55+mph, on neighborhood streets. I saw a driver last year hit a dog they should have clearly seen and avoided because they were going about 45 mph and on their phone, they didn’t even slow down after they hit the dog. Americans regularly pretend pedestrians and obstacles don’t exist at all, and have way worse reaction times than what I saw living in Europe. Combined with the high speeds and heavy cars, driving is comfortable for the driver and terrifying for everyone else on and around the roads.

I also wouldn’t compare these American cities infrastructure to most European cities of the late 2010s. Excepting possibly NYC, which is sort of its own league in the US. Maybe they are comparable to the European cities of the 90s, but things have moved on a lot since then.

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