Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars • Hacker News Board

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#201

Post by enriquto » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

dwedge wrote: post #140

TimK65 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorists are incredibly fragile. I'm glad Paris has had a mayor who could stand up to their entitled whinging.

Motorists are an easy scapegoat but without alternatives it's just political handwaving. And most people are motorists. Take my city for example. I work in an office block around a 15 minute walk from the centre, which has free parking for employees. Monday this week the city announced that the land is now paid parking to the city effective immediately . When it was pointed out they they hadn't provided any of the ne…

> the city announced that the land is now paid parking to the city

what a strange way to put it... why didn't they just say that they are not using any more taxpayer money to finance your parking space? Land in a city is not "for free".

> It's very easy to call another group entitled if you're not one of them

yeah, well: my point, exactly!

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#202

Post by hamdingers » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

the_biot wrote: post #50

tikhonj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the changes in the comment make owning a car impossible, they just make driving marginally less privileged over walking and biking.

No, it's worse than that. The city council very much implemented an anti-car (harassment) policy, to the point that car owners felt hounded by their own council's policies. It seriously wasn't a matter of "marginally less privileged".

When one is accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#203

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

pastel8739 wrote: post #137

chiefalchemist wrote: post #41

Slightly off-topic but NYC went through a similar process when congestion pricing met legal battle after legal battle. Long to short, there was a calculated effort to make midtown less and less vehicle-friendly. The "hack" was to take streets / aves and repurpose those for pedestrians. Special walking lanes, more "park cafes", bike lanes, etc. None were stated as being anti-vehicle - as that would open up legal chall…

But in fact the end goal wasn’t to remove vehicles, it was to reduce congestion, emissions, etc. Those things are caused by vehicles, so policies to remove them will affect vehicles, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that their motivation is anti-vehicle.

It is also anti vehicle. Moving people in nyc at densities of 10ft by 20ft apart from the next human at the best theoretical case is astoundingly stupid.

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#204

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #198

LaGrange wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t really know if eating microplastics is particularly bad, but we do know breathing any pm2.5 and below dust is.

Wait till you find out you breath those microplastics as pm2.5 dust too

I believe that was LaGrange's point.

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#205

Post by Mawr » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

youknownothing wrote: post #49

[flagged]

> As the EU continues its course to ban the sale of ICE cars by 2035, the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight.

Complete nonsense I'm afraid. An EV is about 50% cleaner and way quieter. That's literally it. There's no other real benefits of it.

An EV is still a car:

- Still pollutes: it's a 2 ton vehicle with rubber tires - manufacturing that is very damaging to the environment and the tires constantly wear down

- Takes up a lot of space

- Incredibly dangerous to anyone not in a similar metal cage (hence 20mph limits)

- Super expensive

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#206

Post by rsynnott » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

consumer451 wrote: post #184

rsynnott wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… Huh, never heard of anyone actually _liking_ CDG before.

Haha, I get that. You may be aware, but this is Terminal 2G. It is almost like its own tiny airport for short hops by Air France in the EU. It feels like a completely different world from the main mixed-carrier international disaster situation. It really feels like a designer experimental terminal.

Does it still have the weird security procedures? (Security at CDG is IME very slow and just, well, strange; at least once they were asking people to _carry their passports through the scanners_, rather than leaving them in their bags like in all other airports in Europe).

CDG wouldn’t be my _least favourite airport (I think that’s probably San Francisco, specifically the international terminal), but it definitely would be up there.

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#207

Post by Mawr » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #78

youknownothing wrote: post #49

[flagged]

The speed limit in London is at 20mph primarily due to safety, not emissions concerns. It takes approx 2x the distance to come to a complete stop from 30mph than it does from 20mph. For the majority of journeys in London, you're sitting at a red light, or transitioning to the next red light. Not a lot of opportunity for sustained 30mph travel. Accelerating up to 30mph so that you can travel the 300 meters, and then s…

Pedestrian mortality at 20mph vs 30mph is also vastly different: ~10% vs ~25% [1]. Also, see the graphs at [2].

[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22935347/

[2]: https://data.bikeleague.org/new-nhtsa-data-speed-data-shows-...

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#208

Post by Mawr » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

saltysalt wrote: post #151

youknownothing wrote: post #49

[flagged]

Exactly correct, ULEZ and LTNs have created a mess in London. These policies are driven by socialism not environmentalism. Climate is the excuse, reduced personal freedom is the intent. Thankfully many citizens in the EU and UK are waking up to it, so I hope a lot of these authoritarian policies get reversed in the future.

The "mess" being a massive reduction in harmful particulates?

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#209

Post by dismalaf » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #183

dismalaf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Paris has not escaped the wrath of the SUV, and a large part of the congestion cities across the world are seeing is solely down to cars becoming bigger. Europeans don't drive Suburbans. They drive crossovers that are, if anything, shorter than the equivalent sedan or wagon.

So do Americans in many cites like Seattle.

Fair. When I'm in Canada I do see enough big trucks and SUVs though, versus Paris or Prague (the two places in Europe where I regularly visit/live) where the number is basically zero.

Re: Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars

#210

Post by goldenarm » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #168

goldenarm wrote: post #20

I moved from LA to Paris, my mental and physical health improved dramatically. I don't even take the subway, walking and biking are enough where I live. Hopefully we can reach the comfort of dutch cities within a decade.

What do you think about all those videos on how dangerous Paris is? Having made the move, would you say that those stem from real experiences and are organic or would you say that it was an organized campaign for some political reason? Or maybe something else? Trump keeps saying that they want to prevent USA becoming a dangerous place like Europe, even said that recently and the Irish president disagreed with him. As…

I don't have anecdata, but Paris homicide rate is 6x less than LA, 10x fewer car related deaths, but only 1.2x less crime.

Comparing countries and policies is a great thing, we have to learn from each other. Just be careful of misinformation and out of context numbers. Sure France's GDP seems lower, but they don't need a larger car and a larger diet coke to be happier.