| I've lived in Paris for 45+ years. The problem with bicycles is that they don't respect road signs or traffic lights, which irritate the hell out of everybody else. It's true that many car drivers are very aggressive towards bicycle riders, but what you fail to mention is that everyone cheers for the car and not the bike... Personnally I ride a motorcycle; it was stolen last year and so I used bikes for about a month. Here are my observations, that I think are difficult to fix with money alone: - pedaling makes you hot and sweaty; you arrive at the office being a mess - when it rains you get super wet, much more than on a motorbike, because you have less protection and you don't carry special rain trousers with you at all times (whereas they're permanently stored on my motorbike) - also, when it rains, if you cover yourself up to avoid the rain, you get even hotter and sweatier - Paris isn't flat! (contrary to Amsterdam...) and some hills are very steep - some distances are irrealistic for bikes: I have two clients who are 15km apart and (to me) 15km on a bike is a fairly long ride All in all it seems bikes are mostly for tourists (who don't have to show up in an office at the end of their ride), during the summer (well, the part of the summer when it's not too hot) and for relatively short distances. But in the absence of bikes, tourists don't take a car, they mostly use public transports (or maybe an occasional cab), so I very much doubt more bikes mean less car traffic. There is another program in Paris that seems much more promising: Autolib, cheap electric cars that you can rent for a very short amout of time. Doubling that with electric scooters would be really great, IMHO. |
The problem with Paris would be more that it's full of parisians.
It's very cliche, but sadly true. People are smart and educated but undisciplined, behave unresponsibly, and think about rules as mere guidelines. Being "human" and super lenient is mostly a quality, even when it comes to street rules.
Drivers are really bad, bikes don't care about road rules nor surrounding trafic, and pedestrians can strike conversations in the middle of the street if they get to stop the cars around them. There is an intersection in front of a subway station in the town I live, there is a trafic light, mirrors and road marking, and still every two months someone runs through it and gets hit by a car.
I think the best system would be close the streets that already effectively dominated by pedestrians, reserve the most busy streets for professional vehicles (buses, taxi, delivery vans etc.). This would tip the balance to use private cars for very specific reasons only, and switch to public transport for the more casual trips.
Road mortality would be down, people currently wildly circulating on the street would have full areas reserved for them, public transport would have a boost in use justifying more investment in the infrastructure and modernisation, and pro drivers would also have dedicated lanes and streets.
It feels like a clear win for basically everybody.