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

cnn.com

341–350 of 392 posts

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

#341

I live in Krakow and use car everyday*. There is virtually no possibility I will get my kids to school in the morning using public communication, mainly because the school is 4 kilometres away. City is so pro-clean-air and eliminate-parking-spaces and remove-cheap ekhm I mean polluting,-cars but meanwhile does nothing except for selling more and more ground for building flats. Not schools not hospitals not child dayc…

You can try an electric bike for those longer distances. It’s really fun to ride if you find a good one.

Especially in the rain, with a kid on a bolted-on backseat behind you and while sharing the road with cars that don't want you to be there.

Just throw in an electric motor and will suddenly become fun.

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

#342

This article has such a weird framing. It keeps repeating how the cleaner air is so good for tourists. But tourists visiting Paris for a week don’t get the majority of the benefit from cleaner air. The Parisian residents living there throughout the year do. Maybe because it’s CNN, an American outlet, they’re focused on the “tourist”, but these benefits have mostly accrued to Parisians. Also, the 4% increase in traffi…

Tourists get the majority of the benefit because residents of paris are smoking which is makes clear air not really a benifiet for them. I thought the above needed a /s, but a check shows 30% of the people in France smoke. (I can't find city stastics)

i kinda seem to remember that this is a bit misleading and the rates are surprisingly different than expected. i'm too lazy to check the sources right now, but gemini gives me a 15% daily smoker rate for paris, while it's ~30% for detroit, 21% for philadelphia, 10% for new york, 5% for L.A.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If car usage is going down but pedestrian injuries are going up? The pedestrians are not crashing into one another with greater frequency...

Reducing congestion can increase car speeds, which can increase incidents.

But they are reducing speed limits also, so this is highly unlikely...

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

#344
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's your French? Sounds like a flippant question, but I hear Parisians are not that... tolerant of even bad French speakers, let alone non-speakers. That stereotype has kept me from visiting, let alone living there, despite it probably being my dream city in every other respect. I'm in my mid 40s, and learning a new (spoken) language has become extremely difficult. I spent 2 years trying to learn German a while bac…

Maybe it's time to stop caring about these stereotypes over-amplified by social media? I'm from Asia and I speak English with a heavy accent, the only French I know is "merci beaucoup", "toilet?", and "au revoir". I've visited Paris twice (1 week each time) and language barrier or the so-called "Parisian elitism" had never prevented me to enjoy my stay there. That being said, there is still a lot to hate about Paris:…

NYC is way filthier of a city than Paris. The subway in NYC is mental, and don’t even talk about how unfriendly people are in NYC compared to Paris.

I felt safer in Paris, LA, and Seattle than I ever was in NYC.

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how many cyclists in Paris are really replacing cars versus replacing metro usage. Obviously, it's still good for people to cycle as well since the metro can be insanely crowded at times, but living in Paris, my impression is that the people who cycle are the kinds who would have been unlikely to own a car in any case.

That's a really good point, I hope at the very least it enables a "car -> public transport -> bikes" flow. So even if these people were taking the metro, all that extra metro space can accomodate car-owners who wish to switch.

It depends though. At least in London a lot of cycleways were made by removing bus lanes and replacing them with high quality segregated cycle lanes.

This has led to a big increase in %age terms of cyclists in London, but a fairly significant decline in bus passengers.

I think roughly 300m/yr cycle journeys were added, but bus has lost 500m pax/yr (mainly because of increased congestion making them less and less attractive). Note this isn't all down to bus lane removal, but it's a significant part of it.

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

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think about all those videos on how dangerous Paris is? The question to ask is why those videos are being made. Paris, as other people have pointed out, has a much lower homicide rate than big US cities. However for pickpocketing, paris is notorious. But getting actual stats that are comparable is difficult.

Homicide in US cities is an inner city issue. It's not mainstream. There's bad areas - stay out of them. It depends if pick pocketing is ubiquitous or prevalent only in specific places.

The homicides in the US are not random, they are targeted. There is no need to avoid “bad areas” unless you are attempting to start a new gang or sell drugs there.

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

#347
post #301
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

EU is overall safer then USA. Including Paris. And cops are significantly less likely to shoot you. You dont have to be afraid of them.

Nobody is "afraid of cops" in the US.

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they’re EVs tho right

You reckon EVs drive on a sidewalk? Maybe you consider moving. Seems like you’re surrounded by idiots.

Cars are only on an honor system to not hop the curb and murder you. At least you expect bikes on the sidewalk and can keep the risk in mind.

There isn’t much you can do to prepare for the possibility of, say, an SUV vaporizing you and your family on the sidewalk because the 80yo driver zoned out. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/20/san-francisc...

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think about all those videos on how dangerous Paris is? The question to ask is why those videos are being made. Paris, as other people have pointed out, has a much lower homicide rate than big US cities. However for pickpocketing, paris is notorious. But getting actual stats that are comparable is difficult.

Homicide in US cities is an inner city issue. It's not mainstream. There's bad areas - stay out of them. It depends if pick pocketing is ubiquitous or prevalent only in specific places.

It's not just an inner city issue. Rural areas in the U.S. are bad too! Parts of the rural south and rural midwest have homicide rates that are completely off the charts for a first-world country (Holmes County, MS; Scioto County, OH; McDowell County, WV).

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

#350
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elevation doesn't have to be zero sum. My compact pickup (a class of vehicles that is barely manufactured anymore) is a little elevated and has an upright seating position, but it also provides good visibility for other street users. The space over the bed is clear (unless I'm carrying something big) and the rear and side windows are vertical and clear allowing vision through; the windshield is raked less than most o…

A big part of the issue is styling: I was next to a GMC pickup on my bike the other day at a stoplight. When I stood up, the hood was roughly shoulder-height for me. They can easily make the hood at least a foot shorter (and probably more) and still fit everything under the hood, or even go with a cab-forward design. But people think those look dorky. At the extreme end of things, it's hard to argue they are wrong: h…

The NGDV is dorky as hell. But I bet they're very effective for drivers.

I've got an old cabover passenger van, visibility for me is pretty good, but if you were next to it on a bike, you wouldn't be able to see over the hood cause there isn't one.

It's also pretty dorky, but it's got essentially a porsche engine, which makes it a rear engined mid-life crisis sports car. I have to run it at red line for 30+ seconds to get up to freeway speed...

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