Let's hope that they have it be designed by actually experienced road designers, and/or people who commute by bike. So much a French bike infra is so clearly build by people who never use it. Turns too sharp, cycle lanes next to parking strips (French motorists don't check where they swing their doors), lanes that end a busy intersections (creating intersection arenas), places where you need them the most...
I'm from the Netherlands and I see there's a serious effort in France, but before they build anymore they really need to get some experience into the design. Much of the infra barely helps having a safe and comfortable commute like we have back home.
Here in grenoble they opened a bunch of new lanes last year, and one stretch in a very busy road is actually in the middle between the two car lanes, on slightly raised ground, like 10cm, enough to make a bump if you cross over with a car, but that's all.
At first I hated the idea but once I was on there for the first time it immediately became clear to me that whoever had planned this had thought more about it than I ever did in my last five years of bike-commuting.
Being in the middle means that bicycles of both directions share space (which feels much more generous than sharing with cars) and you're never next to parking cars, at risk of being doored.
So yeah, there's a lot of improvement to be made with simple changes like this. I hope they seize the opportunity.
A disadvantage of that placement should be the pollution you're exposed to. Even small displacements of the bikepath next to the road have a large impact already.
I cannot wait for internal combustion engines in cities to die out.
They must have some effect, inasmuch as cyclists and motorbike drivers in highly polluted cities like Kathmandu and Delhi wear at least a cloth over their mouths for their own comfort.
Try cycling in Delhi or Kathmandu without a mask and then tell me a face covering doesn’t do anything but a placebo effect. Yes, without a high-grade mask people are still breathing in dangerous fumes, but putting something, anything over your face will still block certain larger particulates that would otherwise leave you choking and angry at the whole experience.
(A small detour: In Japan you can buy traffic safety charms that are reflective. They might work for pedestrians and people on bicycles - the only charms I've seen so far that look usable.)
Parisian cyclist here: it's true that old bike infrastructure is bad (I have quite a lot of grips on my daily commute due to bad design), but that's not the case with new bike infrastructure.
Some good examples of new bike infrastructure are Boulevard Sébastopol from Gare de l'Est to Chatelet, and rue Rivoli. Both of those streets are a delight to bike on, as they are straight, the path is wide, and it is clearly separated from both motorists and pedestrians.
Let's hope they follow that kind of design for new infrastructure. Since it's a plan already on-going, I'm not too worried. We'll just have to live with existing bad infrastructure for a while.
> Let's hope that they have it be designed by actually experienced road designers, and/or people who commute by bike
Indeed.
It's a similar experience in the UK where a lot of the bike paths seemed designed to meet council goals rather than be usable.
Near me we have several stretches of dedicated bike paths, sadly unconnected between them and one leads into a fence (I wish I were making it up, though to be charitable maybe the project run out of money before they could complete it)
No doubt the council congratulated themselves on building ~ 1.5 miles of bike paths that year.
My nearest town got a white line down the main road. It's actually worse than nothing because it's full of potholes and you get grief from drivers if you ride outside it.
Hey, a motorist who sees you and gives you grief is many times less likely to kill you then one who simply doesnt see you. Grief from motorists is good when ure a cyclist (not optimal, but good) Being visible to motorists is the #1 thing u can do to be safer.
You just cycle wherever and however is physically safest, the road laws and regulations are not designed to keep you safe, they're designed for motorists to be able zoom around wherever they want unimpeded by anything. The only law you should be concerned about are the laws of physics.
When motorists are beeping at me, I take it as a beautiful fanfare to celebrate 'safety achieved' hurray hurray you can see me!
Here in Australia we usually just get painted cyclist stick figures in car lanes.
Seeing them, I usually can't help but imagine that every one is the chalk outline of another cyclist fallen victim to such a pathetic excuse for infrastructure.
I cannot agree more. I am so annoyed that there is good number of new cycle lanes are created along the busiest street in the area. Not that there are no parallel roads that are much nicer but no, you have to build them were all the noise, bad air and danger is. Same for cross country bike paths that tag along a cross country roads and sometimes even the motorway. No wonder almost nobody uses those.
Actually, that's by far the best cycle path right now in French cities: find a quiet parallel road (probably no more than one street over) and cycle there.
I believe it will take a few generations. They'll probably make sub-optimal designs taking into account the local car culture. If they're lucky in 15 years they'll again have a mayor interested in advancing bicycling, and they'll improve the design, with car drivers more aware of bicycles by then. Repeat every time the roads are rebuilt.
Other countries never seem to take the shortcut to a proven, optimal design. Not Invented Here syndrome.
It's going to take a long time for the rest of Europe to catch up with the Netherlands. Hopefully not quite as long as it took the Netherlands to get where they are.
> (French motorists don't check where they swing their doors)
I don't understand how this happens. I haven't lived in other countries, but don't they bump into pedestrians or other cars if they open the door without looking?
This is incredibly common throughout the world. It is so common in fact, people have come up with a name for a "special" way to open doors to prevent this, the dutch reach.
The dutch reach is just opening your door with the opposite hand you normally would, which forces you to rotate your body and look back where a cyclist would be coming from.
In the US getting hit with a car door from someone not paying attention is appropriately called "getting doored" and is pretty far up there in things to look out for when biking!
I heard about the Dutch reach, and was just as surprised for the same reason: although I'm Dutch myself, it's not just cyclists I'm watching out for when getting out of a car, so it doesn't feel like the reason for doing the Dutch reach are specific to the Netherlands...
I also drive in France. My experience is that French drivers only look through their front window. Mirrors, other windows, they seem to be there just for export ;) Also, cars are generally way more dented than back home.
I've had accidents, and many more near-accidents because of this. Indeed, I'd never even considered that people actually just swinging open their doors onto bike lanes was a thing to watch out for until I moved to France.
Must say Paris is better (less pressed) than Lyon (where I lived), and therefore a calmer ride.
> Under her plans, Paris was to remove 72% of its on-street car parking spaces.
Totally a political promise made by the kind of people who think subway tickets cost 5€ and only use official cars that comes with driver and parking.
I hate cars in Paris as much as anyone, but they are required in a number of cases and this measure will hugely impact negatively the mid-class and poors that needs to commute to Paris for work, while not impacting the (very) richs that can live in the center.
This is a common refrain, but I don't think it's supported by evidence. The poorest people cannot afford own a car[1] - and one can hypothesise that the high entry cost (purchasing a car, buying insurance) is a significant reason for this. Other methods of transport, such as cycling, walking, buses and trains do not have this high entry cost and so are much more accessible for the most disadvantaged people in our society.
It's also critical to have a strong urban planning policy that allows people to live near to where jobs and transport hubs are. Suburbs inherently advantage car owners (and, consequently, the richer people that can afford to own a car).
I don't think people commuting to Paris for work use public parking space, the cost is much too high for everyday 9-to-5 usage. Either they use public transports, or have a private parking space at work. In both case they're not impacted by reducing public park space.
It will impact the upper to middle class who go to paris to visit or to shop, and maybe homeless people living in their cars. middleclass commuters don't park on on-street car parking place, and poor, non-homeless people don't own a car when living in or close to Paris.
Also subway cost 35€ a month (well, 70 if you're not working), or ~20 a week if you're a tourist (unless you take one-use ticket, but don't do that, especially if you arrive by the airport). One-use ticket if you stay within Paris last 2 hours and cost ~2€, but it is more expensive if you're not actually in Paris (i think its 15€ from CDG to the center).
Don't be too hopeful about that. Barcelona in general is a bicycle-friendly city, and most of the city-center bikelanes looks like this (lane on the furthest right is the bi-directional bicycle lane): https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3894796,2.1634847,3a,75y,66....
Most people seem fine with this arrangement, we're pretty used to tight spaces, for people, cars, motorcycles and bicycles. Maybe this lane is only fine because we don't have as much bicycle traffic as Amsterdam or Copenhagen, but seems to work well right now.
I'm not saying it isn't good as a quick fix temporary measure, but over here in Belgium this has been consistently used to pretty up the cycling path numbers while doing nothing.
We even invented "cyclist suggestion paths" ("fietssuggestiestroken" colloquially referred to as "paths of shame" (schaamstroken) [1]), which are not cycling lanes as they explicitly allow cars to ride on them, but just a color painted onto the right hand side of the car lane to advice cyclists not to ride side-by-side (which is their right within inner-city limits) but ride on the narrow painted strip behind each other, So this is an anti-cycling measure, and it still is counted as "cycling infrastructure".
Wow, you're allowed to ride side-by-side. Is that common in other countries?
Over here cars honk, even if 2 cyclists take only 1/2 a lane of 2 same-direction lanes and <5 cars pass in a minute. OTOH, if you ride the same, except the sheltered cyclist isn't there, they don't make a fuss even in moderate traffic - they just don't like you talking.
A painted bike path is a placeholder for a more dedicated bike path in the future. An anectodal example: the first time I was in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, there was a four lane road in which two of the lanes had been painted green and blocked off with small planters on every block. I'm back here now in 2020, and the entire road has been converted to a pedestrian-only road for about 8 city blocks. There are retractable barriers at either end allowing for utility vehicles.
That's great, but sadly the same does not hold for my country, as unprotected narrow (1m wide) 'cycle paths' are 'separated' from the cars and trucks flying past at 70-90km/h (official speed limit, in practice 80-110km/h) by a 15cm wide stripe of paint on the asphalt. This has been the norm for decades.
Makes sense. Paris is currently not quite as cycle friendly as you might think, given its early adoption of bike sharing and close association with cyclesport.
I live in Paris and almost only travel by bicycle. It all depends where you're going, but it's improved drastically in the past few years. In fact it started with Vélib, the sudden increase in bikes forced other road users to expect bikes and act accordingly.
Can confirm. Cycling in Paris can feel downright dangerous on the roads, and even the existing cycle paths can feel a bit dangerous as tourists (in particular, but not always, in my experience) are not used to looking around for the pathways.
The French city where I live (Lyon) also has some ambitious cycle way plans, though these have been in development since well before COVID-19.
considering how sars2 may be infecting through aerosols, it might not be a great idea to cycle for high-risk people . OTOH, keeping people outdoors reduces the infection rate by 19 times , and the sunlight kills the virus in 3 minutes, so anything that promotes outdoor instead of indoor congregations is good
Isn't the most interesting point about this the assumption that people are going to abandon public transport in favour of cars when the lockdowns end?
That seems to suggest we'll have more crowded roads with reduced capacity (due to the added cycleways); maybe I'm being too pessimistic though, and we'll see a big switch to WFH.
I do think it’s inevitable we will see a switch to work from home for a long time. Social distancing norms significantly reduce elevator capacity, making high-rise office towers impractical. Staggering morning and evening rush hours might be doable, but add the need to schedule lunch traffic, and, I think, the conclusion will be that the building can’t hold as many people as before.
As to a move to cars: if cycling becomes faster than public transport, adding bicycle lanes could speed up car commutes because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox (“the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport“)
> That seems to suggest we'll have more crowded roads with reduced capacity (due to the added cycleways);
The goal of course is to have people actually use the cycleways, which should increase capacity: you can fit multiple cyclists in the space used by a single car driver.
Of course not everyone who is driving will immediately switch to bikes, that would be unexpected. But many do use cars when they could have used bikes, but because the infrastructure is poor, they chose cars. The ones that come from outside the city can now park within range of their work and bike the rest. Paris is notable for it's shitty traffic (and drivers...), so many would want to switch to bikes, just to avoid going insane.
During the transport strikes last december/january, Paris had a huge surge in commuting by foot/bike/scooters; it is possible to make it happen again, it worked well, actually so well that bike lanes became too crowded, sometimes more than car lanes. I think they are aiming to make the same kind of "behavior" happen after may 11th, but enhanced.
Cars were in surge too at that time mostly for people not living inside Paris but needing to go inside, since the distance plus less bike lanes in the cities around makes bikes impractical for that use case. That's likely to happen again, sadly there is no good way to solve both inside-inside and inside-outside street sharing at the same time...
...i think there's a lot more important issues that cycleways, to be blunt. Cycleways aren't going to help the tons of people that are out of jobs or lose their jobs if we have any post-pandemic economic slowdowns, and a lot of regions that depend on tourism are going to suffer a massive hit.
This is pretty awesome. But even though as a cyclist myself, I am a bit uncertain about bicycle lanes in Europe as a whole(maybe except Greece, Italy, Spain, Malta, Portugal and so on, where the weather allows it). Let's take my situation for instance, given that Greece is just 250-300 km south from me: During the period between October and April cycling is pretty much impossible unless you have a death wish - starting with heavy rain, followed by a meter of snow and ice. That's 6 months out of the year during which those lanes and paths are practically unusable. Sure, there are a few enthusiasts that will carry on even in those conditions(and I know one or two of those) but in any case, for 98% of cyclist, this is unthinkable(myself included). So in those 6 months, that whole are is simply unusable, while traffic jams expand beyond reason.
I think in this case it's worth mentioning, because not everyone cycles. You'd probably value the perspective of someone who cycles versus someone who doesn't, right?
And one important aspect of being a "cyclist" is to regularly drive some distances, like > 10miles. The biggest problem with bike paths is, that they are often decided by people, who mainly drive cars and only very occasionally, without much training and experience take some short joy rides of bikes and think this qualifies them as cyclists.
You don't have to be sporty at all, but once you cycle at least once per week > 10 miles, your perception of bike paths changes quite considerably.
I think that's the difference between "identifying as a cyclist" (cycles >10 miles for enjoyment) and "cycles to work, but it's not part of their identity". It's the latter you should optimise for to efficiently make use of public roads and reduce pollution - although the former will benefit too.
The main reason bike paths in the Netherlands are so great is because they work well for untrained people, using it as a means of transport.
OK those are just semantics. I generally walk to work(it's ~4km largely through green areas so a nice walk in the morning and evening). Somehow the idea of carrying a backpack with an extra pair of clothes and having to shower at work isn't very appealing to me. Semantically I mean "cyclist" as in I'll go for a joyride in the evenings and 5-6 hours during weekends. When it's nice and dry that is, rain and water probably bugs me more than you I suspect... And a lot of people around here by the looks of it.
Finn here with a 3–7.5 km commute depending on which office I go to: hills. I was in Amsterdam last summer and rode about 60 km one day with a shitty rental bike and it was a breeze because there was only a couple of inclines that I remember. Here it's constant up and down and I would surely need to shower at work. Personally I have solved that with a pedelec, which takes the effort out of the hills.
On these kinds of discussions, claims about the need to shower at work after cycling usually come from Americans (especially in their southern regions), so it is rather surprising to hear it from a Finn. I feel like Finns pay more attention to appropriate clothing for the season and activity, so they would choose something to cycle in that is breathable and won’t leave them soaked in sweat, and they would be willing to invest in e.g. a merino-wool base layer – merino wool doesn’t stink even if one’s sweats in it.
Granted, I am chiefly getting this impression from what was sold in the sports sections of clothing shops in downtown Helsinki when I was a student there, and perhaps most of the native Finnish population finds that clothing just as unaffordable as I did as a poor foreigner.
If it's 25C out, it really doesn't matter what you wear - if you exert yourself outside, you're going to get sweaty. The American south is quite warm. Wearing wool is ridiculous.
It is not often 25C in Finland at commuting hours. And even when it is, a merino-wool microweight base layer can easily be worn up to 30C and still keep you cool and dry. That is why Smartwool etc. are so popular in the bicycle-touring world.
The problem with the American South is not just heat but humidity, but again, the challenges that they and people in similar climatic regions face are not universal.
Some people sweat a lot, and there's nothing they can do about it.
My commute has been a short bicycle ride to work for most of the previous decade, and I still sweat to the point where I feel uncomfortable if I don't shower afterwards.
I'm not sure where you are that gets a meter of snow and ice. Bike lanes are perfectly usable up here around the UK, Belgium, Holland and France all of the year, just a few puddles to dodge in winter.
The majority of risky cycling here comes riding during rush hour in heavy traffic. Cycle lanes are a great investment IMHO.
”snowfall is somewhat of a rarity in Paris. Although there is at least a dusting of snow about 15 days a year, most accumulation generally disappears within 24 hours. The highest snowfall ever recorded in one day was 40 cm (15.75 in) on 2 March 1946“
Also, if there’s a meter of snow and ice on the bike lanes, there’s a meter of snow and ice on the car lanes, too.
A meter of snow and ice wouldn't be good for cars either but we manage to keep the roads functional in winter. In all of central Europe, except perhaps high in the mountains, winters are manageable more or less comfortably if the bike paths are cleared.
You got it all wrong. You can wear a rain poncho when it rains. But you can't carry an A/C to cycle through the Greek summer (33C+).
Plus, rainy weather can be predicted pretty accurately with some investment. NL/BE have realtime notifications for incoming rainfall. And at least in NL the weather is extremely volatile (no mountains). Countries with more stable weather can surely do the same.
May I invite everyone with weather that has occasional showers to search for 'rain radar' and their region. If the rain patches are wind driven, you can easily predict the time and length of a break and stay dry as long as you're a little flexible.
I live in Alaska in the winter, and biking is incredibly popular during that time. Appropriate equipment (studs, wide tires, pogies), and clothing is needed, and the city needs to properly plow, but it can work.
I'm from the Netherlands and I see there's a serious effort in France, but before they build anymore they really need to get some experience into the design. Much of the infra barely helps having a safe and comfortable commute like we have back home.