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 daycare centres, but flats...
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* Always going to work by bicycle if possible, but if I have violin lesson or doctor's appointment I am not able to because the distances would be too long
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 back and it was a pretty big failure.
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: dirty and overcrowded subway, shady people everywhere, especially around tourists' places of interest, etc. Not that much different from big cities like NYC, SF, Seattle, etc.
It’s probably more similar to Japan in terms of cultural tolerance. I heard the same story years ago and only recently visited (just after the Paris Olympics). I usually try to learn some of the basics of the language before visiting but was incredibly busy and didn’t this trip. I had no issues and I was all over Paris. People were very reasonable, and translation apps/services helped me plenty, but for the most part they spoke English or could understand some basic level of it. If you live there and try to assimilate but speak poorly or little, there may be less tolerance? As a tourist I had not a single incident.
I don’t like to be the ugly American who just assumes the world should speak my language, so I was ready for language barriers, but I had no real issues at all.
Agreed. It seems the Olympics really bolstered both Japan and France from before, where even in remote regions of Japan I had no issue speaking basic English for things I needed.
Prevented from visiting? Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, and the Parisians are pragmatic people. If you're kind and respectful they'll give you that in return.
I can only say the most basic phrases in French and have experienced zero problems.
I went to Paris last year and it was not a big deal, as long as you know the basics like excuse me/please/thank you.
A few times someone would correct us (eg "after 6pm we say bonsoir instead of bonjour"), but it never felt like it was done in a dickish way and people were generally pretty accommodating. Perhaps it helps that I went to Paris with low expectations, not thinking it'd live up to the hype, but I had a great time. Definitely don't let the language thing keep you from going!
I've had a few experiences in France, as recently as a month ago. Not speaking French (I do not) is not generally a problem, no one seems to mind. What some parts of Europe do mind is being too... How do I put this politely... Obviously from certain places with very little sensitivity for where in the the world they happen to be at the time. Often loudly.
As a Dutch person having spend many summers in France, I can say that the latest generations are much more tolerant and friendly. When I was young (90’s) I saw camping owners with war grudges screaming “Campsite Full!! (Complet!! In French)” To any German. I also had to walk out of a boulangerie without croissants because they couldn’t understand the way I pronounced croissant… but nowadays you can just speak English anywhere.
As a Frenchman living in Paris – we have such a huge expat community already (and many english-speakers, I worked with Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Americans, Canadians) than one more or less will be a non-event.
Now it's true that Americans tend to love to frighten each other with firecamp stories about the Big Bad Frenchman, but IME it's mostly a mix of latent francophobia and a grapevine of bad experience between what is locally perceived as wholly uneducated Americans and local Frenchmen that the Americans tend to see as arrogant.
The latest if most often due to (i) tourists forgetting that what is a great week you spent years saving for is another Tuesday for the other guys in the street, (ii) many fundamental French etiquette rules (don't shout, say “hello” first when talking to someone, the absence of a hierarchical relationship between hospitality personnel and customers, distant behaviour is not arrogance but a mark of respect, etc.) are completely accessory in the US customs, leading to very strong misunderstandings.
So book a trip for a week and come say hello, we don't bite! (and avoid like the plague any café/restaurant in the touristy areas)
>>> say “hello” first when talking to someone, the absence of a hierarchical relationship between hospitality personnel and customers
These two are generally adhered to in the US as well. May be the hierarchy part is there if you're staying at really exclusive resorts. But by and large, most folks are polite.
There is obviously the random asshole. But those exist everywhere.
If you can you should go. Lived there for 12 years and my French was not amazing but no one gave me shit about it. English has been required in schools since 00s basically anyone under 40 should be able to communicate. But knowing some French goes a lot further.
Several years ago, I moved to twin university towns, where I can walk everywhere including between towns.
Funny thing about distances in small towns. It doesn't take long to start perceiving a ten or fifteen minute drive as a "long" drive. But a two hour walk while I turn over a difficult design problem goes by in an instant.
The difference between time that saps or renews our energy.
I was more comfortable living in Paris than living in a Dutch city because I was able to live in a banlieue. Biking here is more developed, and that's a plus. But having my job, my living space, my friends and my favorite weekend activities spread across Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague does take a bit of a toll. I wish The Netherlands did have a much less restrictive housing policy.
Interesting ! My comparison was indeed limited, I only lived in center of Den Haag as a foreigner. Decentralization has its pros and cons, but Paris is way too centralized around Chatelet sometimes.
France as a whole is way too centralized on Paris and it's actually hurting the country. If you do read French, there is a very interesting book from 2024 (IIRC) about this. It's called "Quand le parisianisme écrase la France".
Before reading this book I always thought Germany (where I grew up) was the exception for being more decentralized. But it looks like actually France is way more centralized even compared to other pretty centralized countries.
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 an American, would you say that EU has fallen and it has become a shithole or maybe something in between? I'm just curious if its just about differences of expectations or something.
> As an American, would you say that EU has fallen and it has become a shithole or maybe something in between?
Would love to know the social media you've been consuming that could make you believe that an American in Paris who is praising French city planning for its positive health effects could possibly believe anything close to that epithet uttered by the current American president.
I have visited Seattle, SF, LA, Phoenix, Miami, Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, and Amsterdam in the past 2 years, and I can say with 100% confident that the cities in the US are shit compared to those in Asia and EU. They are not even close, they are just simply shit, there is no comparison at all. I have no idea what the statistics is, but I feel much less safe in US cities.
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.
I just paid about 2 grand for new tires on my car. That contributed to GDP, but it certainly didn't make me happier than I'd be if I didn't need a car in the first place. GDP is very misleading when it's measuring work that shouldn't need to be done in the first place. Hurricanes and earthquakes are also amazing for GDP, especially in places that never bothered to prepare for them.
I am EU too and I know Europe is doing quite fine on average with some good and bad places but I wonder if all this is propaganda for the Americans or if the Americans genuinely expect something else from life.
The idea that Paris is more dangerous than any big city in the US is laughable, and any person that thinks otherwise or that believes anything that Trump spouts is either gravely uneducated at best, or an absolute moron at worst.
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 traffic jams is minuscule when compared to other large cities across the world (outside of maybe NYC, since it implemented congestion pricing over that period). 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.
The new large cycling strips that appeared in the last 5-6 years are so good. At commute time there are frequently jammed with /cyclists/, but let's face it it's miles better than being stuck in a car. I shudder to think about the alternative where each cyclist was instead alone in a small car, this wouldn't even fit on the roads.
I would love to be on what amounts to a group ride to and from work safely. That has to do wonders for all kinds of things both physical and mental. If it were safe I would do it year round.
As a pedestrian I would hope that those cyclists remember when they’re pedestrians too. Both can kill you easily. But cars don’t sneak up on you silent from behind when you’re on a sidewalk.
Have you looked at any actual data about the rate at which drivers and cyclists kill people in your area? Can you even find news about the last time a cyclist killed a pedestrian in your city?
Because I keep an eye on the official Police stats in Toronto and it is eye-opening. Statistically, drivers kill people, and cyclists don't. It is not even remotely close.
I don’t care about your stats. The fact is: cars move in their dedicated space. Most of them obey most of the traffic rules. Bicycles and scooters zoom past me on the sidewalk and it doesn’t make me feel safe. Neither having to jump over them on a sidewalk. I’m young, I can, but my mother cannot and it’s a problem for her. So take your stats and read them alone. Thanks, I take a car. I’m from the generation who doesn’t have their noses glued to mobile phone 24/7.
Just a single anecdote, but one death made the papers here last year because it was an e-bike that hit and elderly gentleman. The e-bike had been modded and the media was suggesting the cyclist faced jail time as a result. (if I remember correctly)
What a ridiculous statement. Motorized vehicles are involved in the vast majority of road casualties. You are much, much more likely to die from a car accident than a bike accident.
You are not making a good faith argument when you refute this person by saying this “doesn’t fit your narrative” two comments removed from you telling another person that you have no interest in their statistics because of how you feel.
as a former pedestrian only and bike rider for the last 5 years, we really do have to admit that bike riders can be real assholes. whether or not the level of injury is the same, it definitely feels an unwarranted physical threat to have a biker shoot past you from behind or run you down in the crosswalk.
Do we have to admit that in this sub-thread? Your sentiment is better placed where we are not currently deriding the absurd take that "both can kill you easily". There is no recovery to be had here.
Of course there is. The world isn’t black and white. I said “could”, there are many shades of grey in between. Don’t be such an absolutist, like your truth is the truest one.
sorry, I just really don't like this glib response that while I might be unnecessarily aggressive and threaten you, its not really not a problem since the likelihood that I'll actually _kill_ you is much lower than if I were the same idiot driving a car.
You haven't been in a bicycle-jam until you've been before an open bridge just before the university colleges start in the Netherlands. Hundreds of cyclists trying to squeeze through a tiny bottleneck. Still costs less time than by going in a car.
Well IDK, as a pedestrian in Paris I hate cyclists way more than I hate cars. Cycling in the Netherlands is wonderful; here, it might well have been a mistake.
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.
On a nice day it's fantastic to be out, but Paris can be cold and rainy. They really need to have a plan for those days, too.
Paris Metro is pretty nice, and reaches most of the car free area. But I'm not sure if it can handle all of the cyclists if they're all trying to avoid a déluge.
I live in the Netherlands where the weather is arguably tougher than in Paris (rain, cold and wind for large portion of the year) yet everyone bikes year in year out.
And not just young active people, it's a habit found across all age groups, parents bike their children to school (or with them if old enough, etc.)
All that to say I wouldn't worry too much about the feasibility issue, it's really more of a mindset to adopt, and it's happening more and more in France.
Paris has one thing that Amsterdam does not that makes cycling more challenging: elevation. (Ok, Amsterdam has bridges but those are for the most part really short and momentum is enough to carry you across).
I cycled to work every day in Southern Germany, which had even more elevation, it was not a huge problem, you get fit enough in now time. Older people just use e-bikes.
Bicycles have had gears for almost a century, and they allow to tackle hilly areas easily. Also, the Netherlands is notoriously windy, and a headwind is just as difficult as a hill.
No, what makes the Netherlands different is their street design prioritizing safety rather than speed at all costs. When the streets feel safe from speeding drivers, more people choose to ride a bike.
Not at all. I simply suspect that you are uninformed about why cycling is popular in the Netherlands. In the 60s the Netherlands was just as flat as it is today, but it wasn't a cycling paradise. It all changed with the campaign "Stop de Kindermoord" (literally translated as "Stop the Child Murder"), which began in 1972.
Considering I'm not Dutch, you may feel reassured there is no superiority feeling at play here.
I agree with another commenter that while flat, the Netherlands have their own hurdles (biking with a strong headwind on the banks of the IJ is not easy, even if flat), and I definitely agree that their city design is what makes this unique.
I lived in various parts of France growing up, and I can assure you there are flat cities there, yet biking in them felt very risky at best.
This “nobody cycles in bad weather” is a tired myth. Yes, there’s some truth in it but cycling numbers past the traffic counters in my city in the UK (very similar climate) dip by 10-30% in winter months, and the higher end of those is mostly leisure routes not commuting ones. The Netherlands has a lot of rain and much more cycling than most other places.
This is overblown. I visited Tokyo recently and a friend of mine was constantly riding his bike around in the middle of a cold and snowy winter. He wasn't the only one, either.
I cycle in Paris every week, and the only annoying experience climate-wise is the extreme heat you can get some days in july and august. If it's cold or wet, you can just wear appropriate clothes and be comfortable. But if it's sunny and 35°C, you are going to be drenched in sweat no matter what! Of course, being in the metro those days is even worse...
I have cycled every working day in The Netherlands and in Germany for years (in Germany it was 22km per day) and I would often cycle a bit recreationally in the weekends. It really isn't an issue at all. I just have a waterproof jacket (one of those that circulate air as well), water resistant shoes, and rain pants. On very rainy days, I would put on the rain pants and would arrive mostly dry.
It is not really an issue.
The only thing that was slightly meh was the yearly ~two weeks of thick snow in Southern Germany. It increases effort a bit, but still not a huge issue and the cycling roads got cleared pretty quickly.
> At commute time there are frequently jammed with /cyclists/, but let's face it it's miles better than being stuck in a car.
Cycling is wonderful, except when it rains, when it's cold, when it's hot, when it's windy, or when you want to carry stuff. So it's not a practical solution 80% of the year.
Unless you have a place to shower and change at work or wherever you go, biking is utterly impractical. That's also assuming you have a safe place where to leave your bike, and that your commute is like 10 miles or less.
God I hate this argument so much - it's just such an obviously incorrect statement which is always hard to win against because then the other side will always say "well what if you live in Novosibirsk and it's -60C outside, WHAT THEN CYCLISTS" - well nothing, if you live there then yeah I guess it doesn't work. But if you live in London, Paris, Warsaw, Barcelona, Talin or Stockholm it just doesn't hold water , and these are places that get very hot, very cold, get plenty of rain, snow and wind. It's like that old thing about beetles being too heavy to fly but also they can't read so they don't care - somehow cyclists in these places just get on their bikes and get to work and carry stuff and stay dry or cold or warm and it's fine, despite what the internet thinks.
I've been to Copenhagen in the dead of winter with snow on the ground and my mind was blown by how many bikes there were on the streets. It really is an adaptable activity.
I’m with you. As someone who cycles every day, just put the right clothes on when the weather calls for it, and if you need to buy a sofa, then rent an hourly car for ten bucks.
I think it’s no easy task to reform a city away from being car-centric. In my home town of Ghent (in Belgium), we’ve had several iterations of a traffic plan that gradually reduces the number of parking spaces, rises taxes and car related costs, makes streets one way or deprioritises cars (e.g. a car doesn’t have priority over a bike anymore) etc. It’s not easy but the city today is a lot more liveable than it was when all this started.
It certainly helps the buses move more efficiently, but it can't do much about things like bus stop placement, or just generally sense of place as you start or end your trip.
I see. I think you're talking about stop placement on a higher level? Removing street parking can free up room for lots of extra stops, which can help with bus bunching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching
I'm talking about what you physically see, or even step over, at the actual physical location where you're contemplating putting the bus stop; which is there because people were only thinking about cars when doing the zoning and construction.
car centric areas put their front door far from anyplace a but can easilly get. Either the but slows everyone else down because it is going in and out of all these parking lots and cul-de-sacs, or the walk from the but stop to where you are going is already your entire travel budget.
I think it gets confusing because we start out talking about cities but we'd also like to include other areas that are overrun with cars in the conversation. Buses in Ghent and Paris aren't going to be navigating parking lots and cul-de-sacs, no matter how much car infrastructure is removed. We can free up a lot of room for bus stops, though, which helps keep buses moving smoothly.
Not really. Unless the restriction is to take a generic lane and dedicate it to buses. But if restriction is to take a generic lane and give it to bicycles, then both cars and buses sit in the same traffic jam.
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".
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 necessary signage or machines for this, they decided it was illegal to park there at all, with fines and tow trucks for non compliance. An email from them suggested "cycling or using public transport as the weather is nicer".
I cannot stress this enough. No warning, no compromise, no other use for this land, just an immediate draconian announcement.
It's very easy to call another group entitled if you're not one of them
> 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
I'll be totally honest in that I don't know what the arrangement was before, but that free parking was previously enforced by permits so it's a reasonable assumption that it was not at the tax payers expense
Your job in any political office is not to leave everything as-is and to cement yourself into that position, but to make marginal improvements, even if doing so costs you the next elections or inconveniences people (hopefully only temporarily).
Most of those marginal improvements can only be seen as something positive in retrospective, not while they're being made. While they're being made, they'll always be unpopular, as the voter base is usually not keen on defending the people that are currently in charge. That doesn't mean they won't show up in the next elections, just that they are quieter in the meantime.
I don’t know that it’s a helpful distinction. A lot of people do it all - drive, walk, bike, and take public transit. Only in this kind of discussion do I see people declaring it a team you have to choose.
The starting point is anti-anything-but-a-car, so it's understandable that in the process of getting to any sort of parity you'd feel like it's "harassment".
It's like claiming getting rid of slavery is "harassment", because your unfair privileges are being taken back.
Alternatives naturally become more viable over time as more and more people find car use impossible, but its kind of hard to tell in advance which lanes of public transport are most necessary to improve. So imo the best solution is just to do it, and then see what happens and adapt. It's too hard to plan out everything in advance, and if you try you get deadlocked politically and nothing ends up happening. So you just find the best lever you can to reduce traffic immediately, and just start pressing it. But you warn everyone that you're pressing it, and when you do so you do it slowly.
The reality is that a lot of traffic is simply unnecessary, and dissipates once you add some friction. The most extreme example of that is the rise of remote work during and after Covid. As it turns out, none of these people actually needed to go anywhere.
And more generally, cars induce their own demand simply by virtue of being the fastest and most comfortable option, and they shape the environment around them to depend on them. Small local shops get outcompeted by distant behemoths due it being more convenient to drive. People move to a large house in a distant suburb rather than a small apartment because they know it's just thirty minutes away from work by car anyways. The easier it is to drive, the more entrenched driving becomes. And any way you slice it, undoing that process will cause pain, so you might as well go ahead and start, because you're never going to find a way to prevent the consequences anyway.
The cities were recently reformed to be car-centric(1960s) and can be easily reverted.
All it takes is an understanding how fucked up it is to operate a 2 tonne personal vehicle everywhere you go(if you are able, which most people aren't, legally or mentally), spread the general knowledge and make a long term commitment to public transport, walking and bicycling.
It's a good illustration of why solving climate change isn't just a matter of individual actions. We need to reconsider the whole infrastructure, and you can't do that from the bottom up.
Honest question: What is the hard part? If you took all of that stuff and did it as quickly as you could somewhere else, what's would be the biggest issue? People + resistance to change of any kind?
The outcome seems so obviously good. I have never heard of anyone complaining about a city becoming less car centric, but maybe somehow it's an under-represented story?
Well I sold off my car after realizing I enjoyed the bike ride to work. Then a year later an older family member had a health crisis requiring hospital visits at all possible times of the day and night for many months. Couldnt always rely on cabs and that was the only time I regretted selling the car. But we got through it with friends and fam sharing transport duties. Quite a crazy period so I could imagine it becoming real complicated for certain issues.
There are places where car is simply the mean of transport - to the point where using the car is preferred to literally a five minutes walk.
In contexts like this, using a car is perceived as a right - restricting usage doesn't make people think "I'll take the chance to use the bike", rather "How the f*ck do I get there now?".
You have not heard people complaining about cities impeding traffic, likely, because of the bubble you live in. That is the thing that makes regular people to run for the city offices. A whole lot of recent "urbanization" is not going to survive for long because of this IMHO.
Paris is consistently somewhere in the top 10 cities worldwide by number of tourists per year and this is an extremely important factor to the city. Even if if Le Monde was writing this in French the impacts to/from tourism would be relevant to the article.
When did the fad for compact cars end? Where did all these SUVs come from? Why do drivers want to lug all this extra weight and space around with them all the time?
in the US it has a few factors, one is that trucks are exempted from some mileage requirements, so suddenly manufacturers started making "legally truck" cars
The way I've heard it from drivers, suvs gives you elevation to observe the traffic and the mass to make your bad behavior problem of the other side while you gain real numbers safety.
That's a pure negative sum game though. The elevation gives you only a relative improvement in visibility if other vehicles don't increase in elevation in response, at the cost of sightlines for other road users and especially pedestrians, unless they wear platform shoes.
The same of course goes with mass.
Usually this kind of negative-sum-prisoner's-dilemma incentive matrix is resolved by government intervention which changes the payoff structure.
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 other vehicles, so it's better for looking through.
Of course, as I mentioned, compact pickup trucks are basically dead in the US. You can get a four door car with a three food bed that is marketed as a small truck. If you want a single cab and a six foot bed, you have to buy a full size truck and those are usually taller and bigger and less efficient than a compact truck would be; it can do bigger truck things, but I only need little truck things.
Maybe the Bezos truck brings back small trucks to the US.
Well, in the absence of government, it is pure profit for the suv driver and for the car manufacturer who sells higher margin product. And fuck the pedestrians and those in smaller cars.
Things I noticed right off the bat: framing it as a tourist verses locals issue, a complete lack of numbers backing that claim, and the few numbers presented in the article have any context. I realize this is a travel article, but it seems to be more of a propaganda piece.
Take the claim that the locals hate the changes. Well, the mayor was reelected. So they claim the voter turnout was low and people were complaining, so people obviously don't support it. Sorry, you can't make that conclusion. Under ordinary circumstances, 100% turnout would only tell you the overall support for a particular candidate or party, not a particular policy. A low turnout may reflect an electorate who is not particularly passionate in any of the issues presented in the election, or it may mean something else. It was probably something else in the 2020 elections because those were anything but ordinary: they fell during the peak of pandemic uncertainty (i.e. March to June). So a flimsy assertion based upon flimsy evidence.
Then there are the scanty numbers without context. A 4% increase in traffic jams since 2015 and 31% decline in bus use between 2018 and 2024. First of all, the words "bus use" sounds highly selective. It looks like the Paris metro has been expanding and modernizing rapidly in recent years, which would both take load off of busses and be disruptive to transit users. Oh, and that pandemic thing raises its head again. I don't know about Paris, but a lot of cities took a hit to transit ridership during the pandemic and some are claiming to reach pre-pandemic levels only now. Also, cyclists tend to be the whipping boy for traffic congestion. I can't speak for Paris, but the reality in my parts are that population growth and a surge in construction have been far more disruptive than cycling infrastructure.
Sorry about the rant, but I'm sick and tired of the views of one segment of the population completely overriding the views of another segment of the population ... especially when there are assertions based upon assumptions and flimsy evidence.
Agreed the tourist POV center focus is bizarre AF. it’s almost like they were afraid to ask Parisians or even other French natives regularly frequenting Paris what they thought and so they just went with tourists are happy…
> 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.
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.
One of the major problems with cars is the terrible lack of density. Per-occupant, a car occupies more space on the roadway than any other form of passenger transport. And as cars get larger, that lack of density gets even worse. There's only so much space on the road, so something has to give.
Throughput is directly proportional to the volume of cars, and SUVs have larger volume. Technically perhaps surface area, but there is a psychological effect to height. I believe people also give taller vehicles more space as a rule.
Throughput in congestion is determined mostly by how quickly drivers react to the opportunity to move and how many points of attrition are in a path. Both of what are impacted by the number of cars and how well they break or accelerate, not by their size.
There's space to claim large car cause attrition, but that's completely dependent of the local properties of the streets.
The footprint of the car matters. When cars get 5% longer, the same number of people in cars takes 5% more roadway, which adds up quickly, because the difference between smoothly-flowing traffic and jammed traffic is a fragile equilibrium dominated by breakpoints. Furthermore, heavier cars accelerate and decelerate slower than lighter cars, which has a compounding effect on decreasing overall throughput.
Additionally, driving a small sedan myself, if there is a parking spot (not parallel, normal lot spot) in between two SUVs, there is a good chance that spot is useless, even in my small car.
Just last night, I was parked perfectly (I had to stop and admire my work because what follows), but still had to squeeze out with my door undoubtedly touching the SUV, and it wasn't even a large size SUV.
I really hope waymo takes of and makes it economical to stop owning a car, and reduce the necessity of parking lots
> there is a good chance that spot is useless, even in my small car.
Totally off topic but I've seen two smarts side-by-side in one parking spot, on a right angle to the parking spot making exiting the spot easy. Now that's efficient. And they still were less parked on the road than any big SUV or worse.
Here the large SUVs make everyone else drive slower in the city, because they're so big the driver has poor visibility and thinks they need several feet more than they do in clearance, and so drive almost in the middle of the road. Others then have to go real slow to not get dinged up on either side.
That's an amazing website; thanks for linking it. Apparently, lengthwise, my car easily fits between the wheels of a Ford F-150 without even touching them. My car's full height is substantially below where the F-150's windows begin. That car could probably drive over my car and barely even notice it.
You have a fixed amount of space to put stuff. If the stuff gets larger, can you put more or less stuff in that space?
So now we have at least the same number of people trying to put their stuff in that fixed size space, but their stuff got bigger, does that make it easier or harder for them to put their stuff in that space? Will they have to compete more or less for that space?
fewer cars per foot, less visibility, etc? If there's a sedan in front of me I can see whats going on, if there's a UPS box truck, i cannot even see the light 150 feet away.
I agree, CNN has always had a weird angle to its bias. I am by no means a FOX news nut . I really think a lot of american "news" now is similar to How The WWF ( World Wide Wrestling Federation/ World Wrestling Entertainment) isn't a Sport. CNN , FOX, MSNBC/MSNOW , Newsmax etc aren't news but unfunny entertainment.
I live in Paris and bike nearly every day, with my electric bike, or sometimes the city's velib rental bikes, sometimes private rental bikes (Uber, Dott, Voi). I love the drastic push to add more bike lanes, and reduce car lanes. I don't own a car in this city. Don't need one.
> “She is constantly criticized, but still reelected: I’ve never understood it,” says Lionel Pradal, a bistro owner on the bustling Rue des Martyrs. “Parisians never go out and vote, and then after they complain. This is the problem with French people, it’s always the same.”
This is somewhat of a public secret, but few people ever stay in Paris for longer than say 10 years and thus aren't that attached to the city. It's noticeable in how few people voted in Hidalgo's referendums.
The city has been losing citizens in favour of its suburbs for close to two decades now (if not much longer really) and this is a trend which shows no clear signs of reversing.
> Parisians never go out and vote, and then after they complain.
Wikipedia says that 70% of the people voted. Is it mandatory there?
Here in Argentina it's mandatory, but weakly enforced. We get also a 70% of people voting. Anyway, the big problem are bubbles, probably all the friends of the guy don't like the current mayor and complain.
It's not mandatory. Hidalgo got reelected because people like her, the media is giving too much voice to the pro-cars when 70% of Parisians never drive in the city.
The US has had cities like that, where it’s a perpetually cycling (in both senses of the term heh) mostly-young group of renters who move out to the suburbs when they get older and start families.
If “done well” neighborhoods preserve their character somewhat because the replacement people are basically the same, but in other cases the neighborhoods change drastically every ten years.
People keep saying Hidalgo's policies made people angry, but then voter turnout when she actually asks for confirmation of her policies is low. For example, 2024's vote on whether to triple the parking fees for big SUVs. [1]
Turnout was tiny, but the measure passed.
Well what does that mean? It certainly doesn't mean that there is a huge wave of enthusiasm for the measure.
But conversely it also means there's not a huge wave of anger about it. It's not like the automotive lobby didn't try hard to create one; the media coverage was actually kind of crazy at the time. And with the low turnout, even a small mobilization would have been sufficient to reject this measure. But it didn't materialise. So when I read articles like this one from CNN, I just have to ask myself what the agenda is behind jazzing this up as much.
I would take low voter turnout more as indifference than as lack of enthusiam. To take the parking fee for SUVs example, I would assume a lot of people affected by it and complaining about it aren't even living in Paris, so they can't vote against it.
I cannot read the fiery letters, but it’s quite possible, depending on how the affected metro vs the voting block overlaps, that those who vote aren’t those complaining.
Also complaining is easy, I could do it right now here on HN from any bathroom in the world; voting is comparatively much harder.
Measures like this always seem unfair to me if they aren't announced a few years in advance. A car is a large investment and people may have made different choices knowing that the rules will change. Same with the tax per mile for Electric cars in the UK.
Instead of encouraging motorists to make better choices, they just end up feeling part of a money grab
Large cars impose heavy many negative externalities on people (take up more space, make it difficult to get through a narrow street when they park there, higher mortality when they drive into pedestrians or cyclists, reduce visibility for others, aesthetically offensive). Policy is slow to shift those costs onto the people causing the externalities but it is predictable that it will happen eventually.
Very sorry for drivers' inconvenience, but if they hadn't realized how bad SUVs are for health, climate, and basically anything that's going on in the city, then announcing it early wouldn't have registered either, I think, since they clearly haven't been following any news.
Hidalgo has been very clear about her plans for Paris for many years now, and people are still in favor of them. People shouldn't feel entitled to driving their oversized trucks in and out of our city, when we have such a dense and efficient network of public transit that doesn't make everyone else's lives worse through noise and pollution.
There is some clear bias and green agenda in the way this has been written, which to be fair it's very common in Europe. 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. As more and more EVs hit the streets, the argument against cars is more ideological, about lifestyle. It's about collectivism, about giving up individual transport in favour of public alternatives. It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda. Almost the entire city now has a 20 mph speed limit "to reduce emissions" but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them. Barcelona in particular has become a theme park, Venice has been one for decades. Entire neighbourhoods looks their soul so we can have more Airbnbs and drunk tourists. Sad times.
Your point about banning cars being ideological makes somewhat sense, but must be contrasted in regards to actual numbers.
- EV share in greater Paris area is only 3%, far from being high enough to impact air quality. Overall, the effect of removing cars on air quality has been noticed and celebrated.
- parisians are overwhelmingly in favor of banning cars. Unlike big american cities, car has never been a dominant transportation tool. Paris subway was already built when the first massed produced cars made their way in the capital. Cars have never been part of the soul of any neighbourhood people wanted to live in.
- paris has one of the highest population density in the world: 20k hab/km^2, ranking 31th in the workd. As consequence, parking space has always been crazy expensive, on top of high rents. Similarly for travel time between two locations: I can’t imagine a car being faster (except late at night, for night club and bars), and I try to avoid Uber/taxis intra-muros. Furthermore, a single noisy vehicle is estimated to be able to wake-up up to 150k (!!) people at night.
- a large part of vehicles are actually… taxis and uber for wealthy tourists than don’t want to bother with public transportation. In that regard, pushing away cars frees space for housing, parcs, shops, making the city easier to live in.
As a resident of this city. The clean air is one thing.
EV could give us that and offset the pollution where the batteries are made and recycle.
But the main gain, as someone paying taxes there: is the reclaim of public space for human to enjoy.
Its a cliché to say that Paris is pretty and its so much more enjoyable on a stroll along the bank of the seine that on a freeway at 20 miles/h. ( that freeway was permajamed )
> the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight.
Particles from tyre wear are a big contributor to local air pollution from cars - while they don't travel as far as CO2 to cause the larger scale problems, it's still going to be a local problem from electric cars, and since electric cars are generally heavier than equivalent petrol cars, that does mean they give off more tyre dust.
Large car thoroughfares also didn't do much for the soul of cities and neighbourhoods.
Yep, CO2 is a problem but pm2.5 pollution made many cities hell to live in - and much (not all, of course) of that comes from rubber tyres and asphalt roads.
Yes it is ideological: cars kill cities, kill communities and are bad for everyone involved. They are dangerous to drivers and non drivers alike and are deeply anti social. We need less cars everywhere period.
Putting cars in cities was also deeply ideological. It was about segregation and as a way to extract as much resources from people as possible. The imposition of cars was about turning people into consumers who only point was to purchase goods and services.
We didn’t choose cars- they were pushed on societies through a decades long propaganda campaign.
>Yes it is ideological: cars kill cities, kill communities and are bad for everyone involved. They are dangerous to drivers and non drivers alike and are deeply anti social. We need less cars everywhere period.
You lost me at"We need less cars everywhere period." Not everywhere is a dense city.
You're getting down voted but it's actually a reasonable question. Car infrastructure is much more expensive than bicycle or walking infrastructure, and population densities in rural areas are lower and less able to pay for it, while meanwhile rights-of-way and land for things like bicycle paths are much cheaper to afford. Obviously rural areas still need roads for work vehicles like farming, logging, mining, and so on, but there's no reason personal transportation should be car dependent.
> It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda.
I don't know about London, but in Spain there is no disguise: you can find pro-clean air and pro-human strategies. Pro-clean limits, or straight ban, the access of ICE vehicles to some zones. Pro-human/anti-car limit or ban circulation or park for any car in certain zones.
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 stop for 3 minutes serves no benefit to you (because your journey is still predominantly waiting at traffic lights), but reduces safety for you & everyone around you.
I get why you'd bring these points up. I mean, really, they could make sense. but both "green" and "tourist" points don't line up at all.
to cut short lengthy arguments, just compare urbanism rules in the US and in the EU. the 4, 5, or idk 8 lanes roads you can find in some parts of the US with the at mot 3 lane (paid) highways.
it all comes down to "if you make more room for cars, there will be more cars". if you refuse to cave in for this and you actually provide alternative ways of transportation (bus, bikes, subway if realistic, etc etc), then the overall traffic becomes much smoother. only complaints never cease, but that isn't specific to "moving people around".
It's about the many other objective problems caused by cars besides the fuel use. Most obviously: they cause terribly inefficient land use (demand for parking + the roads themselves being congested), and are a physical threat to pedestrians and cyclists.
> but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
That would be fundamentally incompatible with how traffic works and a nightmare to enforce.
Yeah, if there is any agenda, that's the pro-car agenda... It's absurd to call people wanting to get rid of cars taking space, polluting with noise, dust and emissions, and killing their children part of a 'green agenda'... What? Big Pedestrian is pushing for banning cars?
Looking at TfL’s infographic about the speed limits [1], it is all about safety. In fact, it mentions “no net increase” to emissions. I think there is no such thing as an anti-car agenda, but perhaps there is an anti-death one.
>As more and more EVs hit the streets, the argument against cars is more ideological, about lifestyle. It's about collectivism, about giving up individual transport in favour of public alternatives.
Making the city safer and more pleasant to be in is now communist?
>Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them.
It seems a reasonable conclusion that the people who elect the people putting these policies in place live in these cities.
… It’s about collectivism? If you’re such a rugged individualist that it reads this way, large cities are probably not for you. Like “we are trying to make the transport work mildly better” is the tip of the iceberg.
Electric cars tend to be heavier than ICE cars. This means their tyres wear out faster, which is plastic dust being thrown up in the air. (We're still not sure of the health impacts of microplastics, but we do know they accumulate in various organs, including the brain.) They also throw up road dust, and we know that rock dust is really bad to breathe in. Air pollution is still present. Compared to ICE cars fitted with catalytic converters, electric cars are probably better, but just because you can't smell their emissions doesn't mean they aren't still reducing the air quality.
They're also still tonnes of metal hurtling along the streets of a city shared by pedestrians, which is inherently dangerous. (Less so than a bus, but there are also more cars than buses: you'd have to check the statistics to see how that evens out.) As for actually damaging the road (producing road dust, potholes, etc, requiring a resurface that off-gases for weeks afterwards): cars damage the road more than bikes, though that's not significant compared to lorries, since the wear is something ludicrous like the fourth power of the weight-per-axle.
Well a big reason for speed limits in cities is safety, that doesn't change with EVs. Another thing you mention is collectivism but cars are a very inefficient private use of public space, both roads and parking, so when such space is scarce it makes sense to restrict them.
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.
EVs are only quieter at very low speeds. If they're going 20 mph or less, they're great, but any faster and air and rolling resistance is most of what you hear.
It's also just as easy for a sociopath in an EV to roll down the windows and blast the neighborhood with noise from the stereo.
EVs are better in the sense that the mufflers of ICE vehicles can be deliberately defeated by twits.
Complete tangent, but I met my equally nerdy brother in Paris last month.
It was my first time, and his fourth. We stayed South of the Republique metro station.
After the literal 30th indie Manga [0] shop that we walked by, I asked him: "how are all these shops financially viable?" He said: "look inside."
Holy crap, they all had customers inside! I had no idea that Japanese culture has such a strong presence in the heart of Paris, in the middle of Europe.
[0] I should be clear, this was not just Manga. There were so many cool indie retro video game shops that it blew my little mind. I should probably get out of my Silesian village more often.
I have to say, I look forward to visiting Paris again as soon as I can find an excuse. I know there are things people could say negatively, as one could say about any large city, but the energy and diversity really drew me in.
I also really like French food, especially when mixed with the crazy chefs in that area that we stayed.
Edit: just so everyone knows, this is what an airport terminal could be, according to Air France: https://postimg.cc/ZCww5xFs - So cool that I had to take photo.
This was the least customer-hostile area that I have ever seen at an airport. Oh, you have to wait for a flight? Just lay back and chill.
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.
So, my brother was departing intercontinental 3 hours prior to my flight to Prague. I hung out with him at one the main terminals in the crazy long security line, until I could not. He showed up 2.5hrs early, and almost missed his flight. Computers were down or something. Once he got to his gate, he had to take a bus to his A350. Crazy shit show. Quote: "this is so ghetto."
Meanwhile, I went to Terminal 2G, and there was absolutely zero security wait. It was like a 1 screener per 3 people type situation. It was like being at some rich people resort airport. Once I got through security, which took 5 minutes, I was presented with a high-end shopping center, a roving smiling robot garbage/recycling can straight out of Shenzhen asking people for deposits... excellent food, anyone could lay down on comfy couches. It blew my mind. It was France, and Air France, flexing.
… Ah. So I just looked it up; no-one flies to Dublin from there (Aer Lingus is 2A, Air France is 2F). Possibly it’s a Schengen-only terminal.
(Living inside Europe but outside Schengen tends to get you the worst terminals/sections of terminals. Berlin Tegel used to have a tiny little terminal that, as far as I could see, only flew to Ireland and Turkey (not sure where the UK flights went from). Absolutely horrendous; there’d sometimes only be one passport control line, so if the person in front of you had an issue you might be waiting for an hour.)
France is the 2nd largest market for manga after Japan (or it was a few years ago). That's surprising because there are almost 7 times more inhabitants in the US.
Those who were a kid in the 80s and 90s in France saw a lot of Japanese anime on TV during this period, so that's part of the explanation.
This article omits so many negatives from the "cyclist's paradise" vision of Hidalgo's 2 terms that I don't know where to start. Families are the first casualties: the Paris metro is nowhere near accessible to strollers except if you are willing to go to the chiropractor after each week end, and using your car - hell, even parking your family car - is a no go as soon as there is some kind of hipster sports event or just as soon as you are after 10am on week end mornings. Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside. And I'm not even talking about used seringes and broken glass in certain parts of the city. I'm actually so ashamed of my city at this point.
About the accessibility issue in the Paris metro: this can be mitigated by using the buses (that's not the best experience but it works fine), and in some parts of Paris (in my experience, east and suburbs) people usually quickly help you in the stairs with your stroller (it's not convenient or comfortable to rely on others but in practice it seems to work). Anyway this is not like Paris mayor has any power on that, the transport authority though announced a few years ago that the main priority after the Grand Paris Express will be making the historical Paris network accessible. And fortunately after two years hopefully your kid can walk and you can carry it without a stroller.
> Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside.
Maybe if it is a newborn, and if you don't bring the stroller nor any clothes, on rainy days it can be that bad. Don't get me wrong, Paris is not a clean city, there are empty nitrogen tanks, puffs and cigarettes lying on the ground pretty much in every arrondissement, but syringes, even on the colline du crack I can hardly remember having seen even one (but it is very dirty there! with packaging, paper, cardboard, bottles).
I still think there should be a higher priority on sanitation but I also think you are exaggerating a bit.
People took their children places for centuries without strollers and cars. The dependance on wheeled conveyances for children is baffling to me, I feel like some parents have an aversion to holding their kids. Especially the ones who clip a carseat into a stroller and never take them out.
We were gifted a big heavy modern stroller and almost never used it, when the kids were babies we wore them and now they can walk a little we just do that and take breaks. If it's going to be an all-day thing (like a theme park) we'll bring a lightweight umbrella style stroller and those are trivial to fold up and carry.
The accessibility argument makes sense for folks with disabilities but not so with children.
Accessibility is always important, regardless of what other options exist.
I loved carrying my kids as babies, and rode them everywhere on my bike, but there will always be people for whom bikes, walking or cars aren't an option, which is why accessible public transport is always important.
No elevators to the metro? That's a problem independent from the cyclist's paradise. A city like Paris should have an accessible metro. Amsterdam has elevators at I think every single metro station (though our metro system is far less extensive than Paris' of course).
Only 30% of Parisians drive in the city. There are real accessibility issues, but cars are probably the worst solution. We could add elevators to more metro stations, or improve bus service, etc. But having a car in the city and parking it is a costly provilege that not many can enjoy. Also cars are super bad for public health, noise pollution and the environment.
> Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside.
That's an insane hyperbole.
> And I'm not even talking about used seringes and broken glass in certain parts of the city.
I used to cosplay as a bike messenger in Seattle. I did not follow the rules at all on my ride to work. There were few bike lanes, and a lot of morons rode on the sidewalks.
I have only been to Paris once, but the cyclists were much more sane in my experience. The bike lanes were clear, and for the most part they stopped at a red light.
I would wager it's the usage of payments and ignoring of pedestrian lights by cyclists is a big factor.
As a pedestrian, I've had FAR more encounters with aggressive cyclists than aggressive drivers (also anecdotal). Makes walking downtown more stressful.
Yes, she's the poster-child for gentrification, that's why France is about to have a far-right government in the near term. But I guess she has made some Parisian bobos really happy, good for her.
Big cities in France never vote far-right, and the PS (left) candidate is leading the polls in Paris' next election, so I'm really not sure what you're talking about. Gentrification is hardly a cause for far-right coming to power.
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 challenges - but that was obviously the intention.
And it worked, there's multiple studies showing that retail business in the neighborhoods that limited car accessibility is up while pollution and noise is down and for those who choose to drive into the city, parking is easier.
Here across the 59th, traffic is definitely worst. With the BQE the daily shit-show that is is (never ceases to amaze me, how people get in accidents on a highway that rarely get over 35mph.) The best way was actually thru the FDR. Now everyone just uses Vernon Blvd which is only accessible thru local streets.
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.
> Moving people in nyc at densities of 10ft by 20ft apart from the next human at the best theoretical case is astoundingly stupid
Are you sure? I would expect that it is average density of people over the length of the route that is important when it comes from moving people from some point A to some point B on a road.
With for example buses you have high density where the buses are actually at, but 0 density where they are not. The average over the entire route can easily be lower than the density for cars where you can have that 1 person per 20 feet over the whole route.
If an observer at a fixed point on the route sees more than about 50 cars pass between buses passing the cars will have higher throughput.
Vancouver did the same thing. Now remaining parking is just filled with luxury vehicles with MSRPs that indicate you could charge $100 an hour and they wouldn’t care.
Nice of the wealthy politicians to get the riffraff off the road so the guy driving a Brabus G-Wagon, Rolls, or 911 Turbo can commute and park in peace. The poors can sit on packed busses with methheads.
This is a tired and unhelpful refrain. Only rich people fill their cars with gasoline without wincing at the price. Only rich people get to own 7 houses. Only rich people get to fill their pools in the middle of a drought.
There are a lot of things that “only rich people get to do”. Reducing the number of people who engage in destructive activities is a good thing, even if it means only rich people can still do it.
No. Rich people zoom in to work and take a stroll to the market on Saturday morning, and they enjoy tapas a the quaint Bistro on the bank of the seine.
I don’t know how you’re defining “rich” but the wealthiest folks I know all go to work physically. They get in their cars, or in one case on their bike, and commute to work like everyone else.
Concentrating on the very wealthiest is perhaps unhelpful, as there are very few of them, so they’re kinda irrelevant for planning purposes. Most well-off people I know commute to work on the train or bus; the city center offices where well-off people tend to work in Dublin are not generally exactly well-provided with parking, if they have it at all, and the traffic is pretty horrible. The office of the tech multinational I work in has 700 people, and capacity for more, and, I think, about 30 parking spaces.
Being on the DART (a not-quite-metro; trains carrying a thousand people every ten minutes per direction) or Luas (a high-capacity tram system) lines tends to lead to homes being considerably more expensive than those which only have bus access.
Dublin used to have a synthetic ‘posh’ accent that was often referred to as DART-speak, because it was common in the upper-middle-class suburbs along the southern section of the DART line. Public transport can be posh, or at least seen as such.
The wealthiest people I know are philanthropist that spend their day on zoon meetings to decide who get the grant.
A couple of time a week someone arrange a visit for them to check on "things are going" on the trenches.
They also spend a lot of time on the phone strategizing with other folks like them.
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But that's not a contest!I'm sure your rich people are richer than my rich people.
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If we were looking at a formal definition, my naive approach would be to use the median income, add the revenue of assets, and add a 20% to that ?
I'm sure the field of sociology could help be more formal here.
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Here I was talking specifically about French folks, where access to remote work and living in the inner city are strongly correlated with higher income.
There's a reason gilets jaunes tended to be what are derisively called "plebs".
I honestly find it extremely interesting how both France and the US have similar fault lines due to the intersection of economic, social, and political culture wars, and an extremely similar manner of consolidated media ownership.
What Paris does politically speaking matters less than what Marseille, Nice, and Toulon does - everyone overindexes on the 20% at the expense of the other 80%. This is what brought Trump to office in 2016, and I see similar mistakes being made across Western Europe as well.
> where access to remote work and living in the inner city are strongly correlated with higher income
People also underestimate the number of mega-commuters in France, and how depending on the distance commuting via Intercités+TGV and a car becomes a wash.
Some people will derisively say "let's make owning a car more expensive to make them change", but that's similar to Marie Antoinette's retort "S'ils n'ont pas de pain? Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!", especially given how severe spatial inequality is in France.
I go to Berkeley Ca often on weekends. As a kid we'd go to SF too because why not. But now it's another $8+ for the bridge, and even if you find street parking it's another $2 an hour anywhere you might want to jump out for a few minutes.
Basically it's an extra $20 to get the opportunity to spend your money in SF.
So now I haven't been to my favorite coffee shop or pizza place in years. Oh well.
Loud, dirty, and stuck in a confined space with people doing acrobatics, or panhandling, or angry.
I wouldn't take BART if you paid ME $20 to go into SF.
The housing market is a bit broken: either expensive private housing or affordable publicly managed one, but very hard to get. People often cannot relocate.
Big debt.
Security, with addicted errands in some districts.
Have you been to St Etienne or Limoges ? If we talk >80k sized French cities, Paris is in the middle of the pack. Maybe on the tail end (if you don't have a lake or fast access to a sea I can windsurf on, you loose a lot of points by default), but clearly not the worse.
Many cities in the world have many thousands of far commuters arriving by train every day. And many of those people even live in single family homes and own cars.
Pedestrian and cyclist friendly cities have more vibrant street life, and are more attractive places to live. I've never heard of car restrictions leading to more suburbanization.
In an American city I would bet on the mobility impaired people to win the cage match against the fewer cars people. They are tougher than they look.
Edit: The responses reasonably talk about the officially mobility impaired people. I was thinking more about the unofficially mobility impaired people by obesity, like me. French obesity rates are ~16% compared to ~42% in the US. That contributes to a fierce US constituency for cars.
A city with less cars is a net positive for mobility impaired people.
It frees space for people (wider sidewalks...), reduce the risks of navigating the streets, and for the ones that have to use a car, there's less traffic and less people stealing dedicated parking spots.
Less cars also means less mobility impaired people. Cars create them through crashes and a lifetime of sedentariness.
Finally, it should be noted that most of the time when someone says "what about mobility impaired people?", when debating reallocating public space to people instead of cars, they are not mobility impaired themselves and don't actually care about them. They just try to guilt shame their opponents to win.
> they are not mobility impaired themselves and don't actually care about them.
That's a baseless and false slur. My first thought was that visiting Paris would be difficult because of all of the walking. I fall in the large gap between disabled and fit. On the one hand I would benefit from more walking, on the other I would not get much enjoyment out of a city that way, and would tend to drive far to services where I could park nearby.
Maybe it's my European bias talking, but "visiting a city" with a car seems like the worst idea possible.
Basically a city is either small enough to be crossed walking, or big enough to have public transportation.
And after walking or cycling, public transportation is the best way to visit the city.
In Paris, there's bus stops or metro (subway) stations everywhere.
A bus or metro puts the passenger at a higher level than walkers/cyclists/car passengers and with huge windows, allowing to enjoy a unique view of the city.
The view of the Eiffel Tower you get when crossing the Seine on the Bir-Hakeim bridge is an experience that can ONLY be enjoyed by riding the metro.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cqIJVzkLD4c
I think you’d have a fairly miserable time navigating any major European city _by car_, even before these policies. They’re largely not designed for it. For a start, where are you parking? It’s not like parking was particularly plentiful or conveniently located before this change.
These sorts of reforms are generally aimed at discouraging people from commuting in by car. People who _regularly drive around central Paris_ (except for delivery drivers etc) would be a fairly small constituency.
> and for the ones that have to use a car, there's less traffic and less people stealing dedicated parking spots.
The article mentions there's now constant traffic jams for city buses in Paris. It seems best for people who can cycle, walk, or people who already live in the city and don't need to travel much.
The occurrence increased, but weirdly, the length (in time spent, not kilometers) was reduced by around the same number. So you enter a bit more traffic jams, but they last a bit less.
> I would bet on the mobility impaired people to win the cage match
Why frame it as a fight? There’s no need to start there; you don’t need to waste time fighting against people not in your group. You just need to establish group status. If the constituency of obese people is strong, why not seek to establish policy on behalf of obese people and not everyone? As the article and others here have said, reducing traffic congestion benefits everyone in multiple ways, including benefits for the people who still have to drive. Given a choice that doesn’t affect your ability to drive, I assume you’d rather have less pollution, less noise, and fewer other drivers on the road?
The other angle missing from your comment is e-bikes. Most of those ~42% of obese people in the U.S. are still capable of riding an e-bike, and for short trips in busy areas, e-bikes are more convenient and easier to park than cars.
Fewer cars overall should increase the availability for those who need it. Same for drivers overall but most can’t see past the first step which is reducing lanes and parking.
I think you're selling cars short. For one thing, sofas don't have a plethora of cupholders that can accommodate any size sugary beverage within arm's reach.
As an obese person I disagree. Even 40 pounds is a meaningful mobility impairment, a difference between a joy and a trudge. I've experienced 200 pounds, and it is a kind of prison. Even a little bit of that prison is deeply meaningful. Have you not experienced it? I think I did more intensely as a yo-yo dieter. I knew what it was like to be fit from recent memory when I wasn't fit, and hated the difference.
My buddy with no arms or legs would beg to differ. He can't afford taxis because he can't work a real job. His friends/family can't drive him around because you need a custom vehicle for his chair. But he can use bike lanes and sidewalks independently without too muuch trouble.
Car-dependent sprawl creates mobility impaired people where there were previously none. Many people are too old, too young, too intoxicated, too vision impaired or too poor to drive. Lack of viable transportation options is the greatest barrier to upward economic mobility for Americans today.
____
* Always going to work by bicycle if possible, but if I have violin lesson or doctor's appointment I am not able to because the distances would be too long
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.
That being said, there is still a lot to hate about Paris: dirty and overcrowded subway, shady people everywhere, especially around tourists' places of interest, etc. Not that much different from big cities like NYC, SF, Seattle, etc.
I don’t like to be the ugly American who just assumes the world should speak my language, so I was ready for language barriers, but I had no real issues at all.
I can only say the most basic phrases in French and have experienced zero problems.
A few times someone would correct us (eg "after 6pm we say bonsoir instead of bonjour"), but it never felt like it was done in a dickish way and people were generally pretty accommodating. Perhaps it helps that I went to Paris with low expectations, not thinking it'd live up to the hype, but I had a great time. Definitely don't let the language thing keep you from going!
Now it's true that Americans tend to love to frighten each other with firecamp stories about the Big Bad Frenchman, but IME it's mostly a mix of latent francophobia and a grapevine of bad experience between what is locally perceived as wholly uneducated Americans and local Frenchmen that the Americans tend to see as arrogant.
The latest if most often due to (i) tourists forgetting that what is a great week you spent years saving for is another Tuesday for the other guys in the street, (ii) many fundamental French etiquette rules (don't shout, say “hello” first when talking to someone, the absence of a hierarchical relationship between hospitality personnel and customers, distant behaviour is not arrogance but a mark of respect, etc.) are completely accessory in the US customs, leading to very strong misunderstandings.
So book a trip for a week and come say hello, we don't bite! (and avoid like the plague any café/restaurant in the touristy areas)
These two are generally adhered to in the US as well. May be the hierarchy part is there if you're staying at really exclusive resorts. But by and large, most folks are polite.
There is obviously the random asshole. But those exist everywhere.
It's safe to assume you'll encounter a very wide variety of people speaking many different languages.
Funny thing about distances in small towns. It doesn't take long to start perceiving a ten or fifteen minute drive as a "long" drive. But a two hour walk while I turn over a difficult design problem goes by in an instant.
The difference between time that saps or renews our energy.
And I am off for a walk...
Before reading this book I always thought Germany (where I grew up) was the exception for being more decentralized. But it looks like actually France is way more centralized even compared to other pretty centralized countries.
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 an American, would you say that EU has fallen and it has become a shithole or maybe something in between? I'm just curious if its just about differences of expectations or something.
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.
It depends if pick pocketing is ubiquitous or prevalent only in specific places.
Would love to know the social media you've been consuming that could make you believe that an American in Paris who is praising French city planning for its positive health effects could possibly believe anything close to that epithet uttered by the current American president.
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.
And cops are significantly less likely to shoot you. You dont have to be afraid of them.
If anything, the US degraded far more over the time I spent there than Europe did while I was away.
Better to get crime information from anything else.
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 traffic jams is minuscule when compared to other large cities across the world (outside of maybe NYC, since it implemented congestion pricing over that period). 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.
https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-workers-commute-...
Because I keep an eye on the official Police stats in Toronto and it is eye-opening. Statistically, drivers kill people, and cyclists don't. It is not even remotely close.
What a ridiculous statement. Motorized vehicles are involved in the vast majority of road casualties. You are much, much more likely to die from a car accident than a bike accident.
> whether or not the level of injury is the same
It is not the same.
Of course there is. The world isn’t black and white. I said “could”, there are many shades of grey in between. Don’t be such an absolutist, like your truth is the truest one.
> It is not the same.
Well, … it depends, no?
When we were there a few years ago we saw a young woman on a bike slam into one on her morning commute.
I nearly nutted myself a few time too.
That’s not necessarily a problem, particularly for saturated lines like the 13.
Paris Metro is pretty nice, and reaches most of the car free area. But I'm not sure if it can handle all of the cyclists if they're all trying to avoid a déluge.
And not just young active people, it's a habit found across all age groups, parents bike their children to school (or with them if old enough, etc.)
All that to say I wouldn't worry too much about the feasibility issue, it's really more of a mindset to adopt, and it's happening more and more in France.
Or those with bad legs. Raises hand.
But with electric bikes becoming more affordable, hopefully the gap can eventually close.
It's completely flat and the obvious reason why everyone cycles. Nothing to do with mindset, like you're somehow superior to the rest of EU.
No, what makes the Netherlands different is their street design prioritizing safety rather than speed at all costs. When the streets feel safe from speeding drivers, more people choose to ride a bike.
Assuming everyone but you is retarded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands#His...
I agree with another commenter that while flat, the Netherlands have their own hurdles (biking with a strong headwind on the banks of the IJ is not easy, even if flat), and I definitely agree that their city design is what makes this unique.
I lived in various parts of France growing up, and I can assure you there are flat cities there, yet biking in them felt very risky at best.
Nah, jk, it's a beautiful day today and I'm thinking of going for a ride.
I cycle in Paris every week, and the only annoying experience climate-wise is the extreme heat you can get some days in july and august. If it's cold or wet, you can just wear appropriate clothes and be comfortable. But if it's sunny and 35°C, you are going to be drenched in sweat no matter what! Of course, being in the metro those days is even worse...
One of the saddest effects of car-dependency is people forgetting how to dress themselves for the weather.
It is not really an issue.
The only thing that was slightly meh was the yearly ~two weeks of thick snow in Southern Germany. It increases effort a bit, but still not a huge issue and the cycling roads got cleared pretty quickly.
Cycling is wonderful, except when it rains, when it's cold, when it's hot, when it's windy, or when you want to carry stuff. So it's not a practical solution 80% of the year.
Wind does suck. I can't help you there.
Or just building some fitness, which in my experience comes automatically when you bike
Why not? Fewer cars means more room for bus stops.
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 necessary signage or machines for this, they decided it was illegal to park there at all, with fines and tow trucks for non compliance. An email from them suggested "cycling or using public transport as the weather is nicer".
I cannot stress this enough. No warning, no compromise, no other use for this land, just an immediate draconian announcement.
It's very easy to call another group entitled if you're not one of them
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!
Most of those marginal improvements can only be seen as something positive in retrospective, not while they're being made. While they're being made, they'll always be unpopular, as the voter base is usually not keen on defending the people that are currently in charge. That doesn't mean they won't show up in the next elections, just that they are quieter in the meantime.
Until you throw yourself in front of my car
> Until you throw yourself in front of my car
Fragile with regard to their egos, as illustrated here.
It's like claiming getting rid of slavery is "harassment", because your unfair privileges are being taken back.
The reality is that a lot of traffic is simply unnecessary, and dissipates once you add some friction. The most extreme example of that is the rise of remote work during and after Covid. As it turns out, none of these people actually needed to go anywhere.
And more generally, cars induce their own demand simply by virtue of being the fastest and most comfortable option, and they shape the environment around them to depend on them. Small local shops get outcompeted by distant behemoths due it being more convenient to drive. People move to a large house in a distant suburb rather than a small apartment because they know it's just thirty minutes away from work by car anyways. The easier it is to drive, the more entrenched driving becomes. And any way you slice it, undoing that process will cause pain, so you might as well go ahead and start, because you're never going to find a way to prevent the consequences anyway.
All it takes is an understanding how fucked up it is to operate a 2 tonne personal vehicle everywhere you go(if you are able, which most people aren't, legally or mentally), spread the general knowledge and make a long term commitment to public transport, walking and bicycling.
:-)
The outcome seems so obviously good. I have never heard of anyone complaining about a city becoming less car centric, but maybe somehow it's an under-represented story?
In contexts like this, using a car is perceived as a right - restricting usage doesn't make people think "I'll take the chance to use the bike", rather "How the f*ck do I get there now?".
it's not a weird framing, it's a clearly marked travel piece on "CNN Travel"
the French don't read that, they read French newspapers etc.
I thought the above needed a /s, but a check shows 30% of the people in France smoke. (I can't find city stastics)
https://adventure.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Hero-Gettin...
The same of course goes with mass.
Usually this kind of negative-sum-prisoner's-dilemma incentive matrix is resolved by government intervention which changes the payoff structure.
Of course, as I mentioned, compact pickup trucks are basically dead in the US. You can get a four door car with a three food bed that is marketed as a small truck. If you want a single cab and a six foot bed, you have to buy a full size truck and those are usually taller and bigger and less efficient than a compact truck would be; it can do bigger truck things, but I only need little truck things.
Maybe the Bezos truck brings back small trucks to the US.
Take the claim that the locals hate the changes. Well, the mayor was reelected. So they claim the voter turnout was low and people were complaining, so people obviously don't support it. Sorry, you can't make that conclusion. Under ordinary circumstances, 100% turnout would only tell you the overall support for a particular candidate or party, not a particular policy. A low turnout may reflect an electorate who is not particularly passionate in any of the issues presented in the election, or it may mean something else. It was probably something else in the 2020 elections because those were anything but ordinary: they fell during the peak of pandemic uncertainty (i.e. March to June). So a flimsy assertion based upon flimsy evidence.
Then there are the scanty numbers without context. A 4% increase in traffic jams since 2015 and 31% decline in bus use between 2018 and 2024. First of all, the words "bus use" sounds highly selective. It looks like the Paris metro has been expanding and modernizing rapidly in recent years, which would both take load off of busses and be disruptive to transit users. Oh, and that pandemic thing raises its head again. I don't know about Paris, but a lot of cities took a hit to transit ridership during the pandemic and some are claiming to reach pre-pandemic levels only now. Also, cyclists tend to be the whipping boy for traffic congestion. I can't speak for Paris, but the reality in my parts are that population growth and a surge in construction have been far more disruptive than cycling infrastructure.
Sorry about the rant, but I'm sick and tired of the views of one segment of the population completely overriding the views of another segment of the population ... especially when there are assertions based upon assumptions and flimsy evidence.
First impressions matter, though.
When you fly into e.g. New York and they pop the door open you get that whiff of exhaust fumes. The city reeks.
Vancouver on the other hand it smells like the ocean.
Any improvement of air quality does matter for tourists and residents.
Europeans don't drive Suburbans. They drive crossovers that are, if anything, shorter than the equivalent sedan or wagon.
There's space to claim large car cause attrition, but that's completely dependent of the local properties of the streets.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365069344_How_the_r...
Additionally, driving a small sedan myself, if there is a parking spot (not parallel, normal lot spot) in between two SUVs, there is a good chance that spot is useless, even in my small car.
Just last night, I was parked perfectly (I had to stop and admire my work because what follows), but still had to squeeze out with my door undoubtedly touching the SUV, and it wasn't even a large size SUV.
I really hope waymo takes of and makes it economical to stop owning a car, and reduce the necessity of parking lots
Totally off topic but I've seen two smarts side-by-side in one parking spot, on a right angle to the parking spot making exiting the spot easy. Now that's efficient. And they still were less parked on the road than any big SUV or worse.
Here's Audi A1 (I used to drive this one, including taking another person and a kid on a ski trip): https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/audi-a1-2018-5-door...
Volvo's own insanely huge and long V60 is still shorter than XC 90 https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/volvo-v60-2018-esta...
How about we choose a different SUV?
https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/bentley-flying-spur...
I see far more suburbans on the road than all models of Bentley.
People aren't choosing SUVs because they're smaller than sedans. They're choosing them because they're bigger.
So now we have at least the same number of people trying to put their stuff in that fixed size space, but their stuff got bigger, does that make it easier or harder for them to put their stuff in that space? Will they have to compete more or less for that space?
Seems like a pretty obvious one to me.
You’re missing the point: tourists are good for the city. If Paris gets a reputation of being polluted, tourism will decline.
This is somewhat of a public secret, but few people ever stay in Paris for longer than say 10 years and thus aren't that attached to the city. It's noticeable in how few people voted in Hidalgo's referendums.
The city has been losing citizens in favour of its suburbs for close to two decades now (if not much longer really) and this is a trend which shows no clear signs of reversing.
Wikipedia says that 70% of the people voted. Is it mandatory there?
Here in Argentina it's mandatory, but weakly enforced. We get also a 70% of people voting. Anyway, the big problem are bubbles, probably all the friends of the guy don't like the current mayor and complain.
No, its the french being _very_ french. Politics is still a sport there, with a plethora of teams playing.
If “done well” neighborhoods preserve their character somewhat because the replacement people are basically the same, but in other cases the neighborhoods change drastically every ten years.
Well what does that mean? It certainly doesn't mean that there is a huge wave of enthusiasm for the measure.
But conversely it also means there's not a huge wave of anger about it. It's not like the automotive lobby didn't try hard to create one; the media coverage was actually kind of crazy at the time. And with the low turnout, even a small mobilization would have been sufficient to reject this measure. But it didn't materialise. So when I read articles like this one from CNN, I just have to ask myself what the agenda is behind jazzing this up as much.
[1]: https://www.lerevenu.com/reduire-impots/conseils-impots/pari...
Also complaining is easy, I could do it right now here on HN from any bathroom in the world; voting is comparatively much harder.
Instead of encouraging motorists to make better choices, they just end up feeling part of a money grab
Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them. Barcelona in particular has become a theme park, Venice has been one for decades. Entire neighbourhoods looks their soul so we can have more Airbnbs and drunk tourists. Sad times.
- EV share in greater Paris area is only 3%, far from being high enough to impact air quality. Overall, the effect of removing cars on air quality has been noticed and celebrated.
- parisians are overwhelmingly in favor of banning cars. Unlike big american cities, car has never been a dominant transportation tool. Paris subway was already built when the first massed produced cars made their way in the capital. Cars have never been part of the soul of any neighbourhood people wanted to live in.
- paris has one of the highest population density in the world: 20k hab/km^2, ranking 31th in the workd. As consequence, parking space has always been crazy expensive, on top of high rents. Similarly for travel time between two locations: I can’t imagine a car being faster (except late at night, for night club and bars), and I try to avoid Uber/taxis intra-muros. Furthermore, a single noisy vehicle is estimated to be able to wake-up up to 150k (!!) people at night.
- a large part of vehicles are actually… taxis and uber for wealthy tourists than don’t want to bother with public transportation. In that regard, pushing away cars frees space for housing, parcs, shops, making the city easier to live in.
But the main gain, as someone paying taxes there: is the reclaim of public space for human to enjoy.
Its a cliché to say that Paris is pretty and its so much more enjoyable on a stroll along the bank of the seine that on a freeway at 20 miles/h. ( that freeway was permajamed )
Particles from tyre wear are a big contributor to local air pollution from cars - while they don't travel as far as CO2 to cause the larger scale problems, it's still going to be a local problem from electric cars, and since electric cars are generally heavier than equivalent petrol cars, that does mean they give off more tyre dust.
Large car thoroughfares also didn't do much for the soul of cities and neighbourhoods.
Putting cars in cities was also deeply ideological. It was about segregation and as a way to extract as much resources from people as possible. The imposition of cars was about turning people into consumers who only point was to purchase goods and services.
We didn’t choose cars- they were pushed on societies through a decades long propaganda campaign.
You lost me at"We need less cars everywhere period." Not everywhere is a dense city.
I don't know about London, but in Spain there is no disguise: you can find pro-clean air and pro-human strategies. Pro-clean limits, or straight ban, the access of ICE vehicles to some zones. Pro-human/anti-car limit or ban circulation or park for any car in certain zones.
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 stop for 3 minutes serves no benefit to you (because your journey is still predominantly waiting at traffic lights), but reduces safety for you & everyone around you.
[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22935347/
[2]: https://data.bikeleague.org/new-nhtsa-data-speed-data-shows-...
to cut short lengthy arguments, just compare urbanism rules in the US and in the EU. the 4, 5, or idk 8 lanes roads you can find in some parts of the US with the at mot 3 lane (paid) highways.
it all comes down to "if you make more room for cars, there will be more cars". if you refuse to cave in for this and you actually provide alternative ways of transportation (bus, bikes, subway if realistic, etc etc), then the overall traffic becomes much smoother. only complaints never cease, but that isn't specific to "moving people around".
It's about the many other objective problems caused by cars besides the fuel use. Most obviously: they cause terribly inefficient land use (demand for parking + the roads themselves being congested), and are a physical threat to pedestrians and cyclists.
> but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
That would be fundamentally incompatible with how traffic works and a nightmare to enforce.
1. https://content.tfl.gov.uk/the-impact-20mph-limits-and-zones...
Making the city safer and more pleasant to be in is now communist?
>Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them.
It seems a reasonable conclusion that the people who elect the people putting these policies in place live in these cities.
They're also still tonnes of metal hurtling along the streets of a city shared by pedestrians, which is inherently dangerous. (Less so than a bus, but there are also more cars than buses: you'd have to check the statistics to see how that evens out.) As for actually damaging the road (producing road dust, potholes, etc, requiring a resurface that off-gases for weeks afterwards): cars damage the road more than bikes, though that's not significant compared to lorries, since the wear is something ludicrous like the fourth power of the weight-per-axle.
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/03/21/drunk-driver-arrested...
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
It's also just as easy for a sociopath in an EV to roll down the windows and blast the neighborhood with noise from the stereo.
EVs are better in the sense that the mufflers of ICE vehicles can be deliberately defeated by twits.
It was my first time, and his fourth. We stayed South of the Republique metro station.
After the literal 30th indie Manga [0] shop that we walked by, I asked him: "how are all these shops financially viable?" He said: "look inside."
Holy crap, they all had customers inside! I had no idea that Japanese culture has such a strong presence in the heart of Paris, in the middle of Europe.
[0] I should be clear, this was not just Manga. There were so many cool indie retro video game shops that it blew my little mind. I should probably get out of my Silesian village more often.
I also really like French food, especially when mixed with the crazy chefs in that area that we stayed.
Edit: just so everyone knows, this is what an airport terminal could be, according to Air France: https://postimg.cc/ZCww5xFs - So cool that I had to take photo.
This was the least customer-hostile area that I have ever seen at an airport. Oh, you have to wait for a flight? Just lay back and chill.
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.
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.
Meanwhile, I went to Terminal 2G, and there was absolutely zero security wait. It was like a 1 screener per 3 people type situation. It was like being at some rich people resort airport. Once I got through security, which took 5 minutes, I was presented with a high-end shopping center, a roving smiling robot garbage/recycling can straight out of Shenzhen asking people for deposits... excellent food, anyone could lay down on comfy couches. It blew my mind. It was France, and Air France, flexing.
(Living inside Europe but outside Schengen tends to get you the worst terminals/sections of terminals. Berlin Tegel used to have a tiny little terminal that, as far as I could see, only flew to Ireland and Turkey (not sure where the UK flights went from). Absolutely horrendous; there’d sometimes only be one passport control line, so if the person in front of you had an issue you might be waiting for an hour.)
> Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside.
Maybe if it is a newborn, and if you don't bring the stroller nor any clothes, on rainy days it can be that bad. Don't get me wrong, Paris is not a clean city, there are empty nitrogen tanks, puffs and cigarettes lying on the ground pretty much in every arrondissement, but syringes, even on the colline du crack I can hardly remember having seen even one (but it is very dirty there! with packaging, paper, cardboard, bottles).
I still think there should be a higher priority on sanitation but I also think you are exaggerating a bit.
A week with a double stroller in Paris will make you appreciate ADA wheelchair ramps, kerb cuts, and elevators.
We were gifted a big heavy modern stroller and almost never used it, when the kids were babies we wore them and now they can walk a little we just do that and take breaks. If it's going to be an all-day thing (like a theme park) we'll bring a lightweight umbrella style stroller and those are trivial to fold up and carry.
The accessibility argument makes sense for folks with disabilities but not so with children.
I loved carrying my kids as babies, and rode them everywhere on my bike, but there will always be people for whom bikes, walking or cars aren't an option, which is why accessible public transport is always important.
> Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside.
That's an insane hyperbole.
> And I'm not even talking about used seringes and broken glass in certain parts of the city.
Not my experience, at all.
looks at the reason
CARS.
I have only been to Paris once, but the cyclists were much more sane in my experience. The bike lanes were clear, and for the most part they stopped at a red light.
What I would like to see is mortality rates of pedestrians in Paris in general. That might be the actually interesting trend.
As a pedestrian, I've had FAR more encounters with aggressive cyclists than aggressive drivers (also anecdotal). Makes walking downtown more stressful.
Anyhow, talking about the hospitalization rate without the mortality rate is very odd and smells of manipulation one way or the other.
Are you sure? I would expect that it is average density of people over the length of the route that is important when it comes from moving people from some point A to some point B on a road.
With for example buses you have high density where the buses are actually at, but 0 density where they are not. The average over the entire route can easily be lower than the density for cars where you can have that 1 person per 20 feet over the whole route.
If an observer at a fixed point on the route sees more than about 50 cars pass between buses passing the cars will have higher throughput.
Nice of the wealthy politicians to get the riffraff off the road so the guy driving a Brabus G-Wagon, Rolls, or 911 Turbo can commute and park in peace. The poors can sit on packed busses with methheads.
There are a lot of things that “only rich people get to do”. Reducing the number of people who engage in destructive activities is a good thing, even if it means only rich people can still do it.
- Enrique Peñalosa Londoño
The obsession with SUVs is classist.
Driving is for plebes
Being on the DART (a not-quite-metro; trains carrying a thousand people every ten minutes per direction) or Luas (a high-capacity tram system) lines tends to lead to homes being considerably more expensive than those which only have bus access.
Dublin used to have a synthetic ‘posh’ accent that was often referred to as DART-speak, because it was common in the upper-middle-class suburbs along the southern section of the DART line. Public transport can be posh, or at least seen as such.
They also spend a lot of time on the phone strategizing with other folks like them. --
But that's not a contest!I'm sure your rich people are richer than my rich people. --
If we were looking at a formal definition, my naive approach would be to use the median income, add the revenue of assets, and add a 20% to that ?
I'm sure the field of sociology could help be more formal here. --
Here I was talking specifically about French folks, where access to remote work and living in the inner city are strongly correlated with higher income.
If you’re looking at billionaire philanthropists, I don’t know what they do but at that level of wealth it’s probably whatever they want.
I honestly find it extremely interesting how both France and the US have similar fault lines due to the intersection of economic, social, and political culture wars, and an extremely similar manner of consolidated media ownership.
What Paris does politically speaking matters less than what Marseille, Nice, and Toulon does - everyone overindexes on the 20% at the expense of the other 80%. This is what brought Trump to office in 2016, and I see similar mistakes being made across Western Europe as well.
> where access to remote work and living in the inner city are strongly correlated with higher income
People also underestimate the number of mega-commuters in France, and how depending on the distance commuting via Intercités+TGV and a car becomes a wash.
Some people will derisively say "let's make owning a car more expensive to make them change", but that's similar to Marie Antoinette's retort "S'ils n'ont pas de pain? Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!", especially given how severe spatial inequality is in France.
Say what you mean to say.
And no public transportation does not fix the problem. It helps a bit, but at the end of the day biggest part of far commuters are gradually cut off.
If decentralization is the target, then just state it.
Citation needed.
Pedestrian and cyclist friendly cities have more vibrant street life, and are more attractive places to live. I've never heard of car restrictions leading to more suburbanization.
Edit: The responses reasonably talk about the officially mobility impaired people. I was thinking more about the unofficially mobility impaired people by obesity, like me. French obesity rates are ~16% compared to ~42% in the US. That contributes to a fierce US constituency for cars.
It frees space for people (wider sidewalks...), reduce the risks of navigating the streets, and for the ones that have to use a car, there's less traffic and less people stealing dedicated parking spots.
Less cars also means less mobility impaired people. Cars create them through crashes and a lifetime of sedentariness.
Finally, it should be noted that most of the time when someone says "what about mobility impaired people?", when debating reallocating public space to people instead of cars, they are not mobility impaired themselves and don't actually care about them. They just try to guilt shame their opponents to win.
That's a baseless and false slur. My first thought was that visiting Paris would be difficult because of all of the walking. I fall in the large gap between disabled and fit. On the one hand I would benefit from more walking, on the other I would not get much enjoyment out of a city that way, and would tend to drive far to services where I could park nearby.
Basically a city is either small enough to be crossed walking, or big enough to have public transportation.
And after walking or cycling, public transportation is the best way to visit the city. In Paris, there's bus stops or metro (subway) stations everywhere. A bus or metro puts the passenger at a higher level than walkers/cyclists/car passengers and with huge windows, allowing to enjoy a unique view of the city.
The view of the Eiffel Tower you get when crossing the Seine on the Bir-Hakeim bridge is an experience that can ONLY be enjoyed by riding the metro. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cqIJVzkLD4c
These sorts of reforms are generally aimed at discouraging people from commuting in by car. People who _regularly drive around central Paris_ (except for delivery drivers etc) would be a fairly small constituency.
The article mentions there's now constant traffic jams for city buses in Paris. It seems best for people who can cycle, walk, or people who already live in the city and don't need to travel much.
Well, no, the article says that
> traffic jams in Paris have risen 4% [in 11 years]
Why frame it as a fight? There’s no need to start there; you don’t need to waste time fighting against people not in your group. You just need to establish group status. If the constituency of obese people is strong, why not seek to establish policy on behalf of obese people and not everyone? As the article and others here have said, reducing traffic congestion benefits everyone in multiple ways, including benefits for the people who still have to drive. Given a choice that doesn’t affect your ability to drive, I assume you’d rather have less pollution, less noise, and fewer other drivers on the road?
The other angle missing from your comment is e-bikes. Most of those ~42% of obese people in the U.S. are still capable of riding an e-bike, and for short trips in busy areas, e-bikes are more convenient and easier to park than cars.
The vast majority of obese people are not meaningfully mobility impaired.
Car-dependent sprawl creates mobility impaired people where there were previously none. Many people are too old, too young, too intoxicated, too vision impaired or too poor to drive. Lack of viable transportation options is the greatest barrier to upward economic mobility for Americans today.