How Paris Beat the Car

 Is an article in the Financial Times.  The author discusses the Paris Mayoral election in term of a pro-sustainable mobility versus car-centric dynamic.  The leading left candidate supports sustainable mobility, the conservative candidate wants to be more car friendly

The author sees car friendliness as a step backward, not just for Paris, but for how Paris enables other cities to adopt similarly aggressive policies--an example of how I say "world class cities don't just take, they give"--in that their willingness to be more boldly innovative enables other cities to maybe not be so bold, but to be innovative, with a successful example they can point to.  From the article:

The city’s transition away from the car, though fantastically chaotic, has become a global role model. Under mayor Anne Hidalgo, Paris was “the most influential city in the world”, says Canadian urbanist Brent Toderian. Parisian car traffic fell by more than half between 2002 and 2023, while cycle lanes expanded sixfold. Bikes now make more than twice as many journeys as cars. Hidalgo, stepping down after 12 years, exulted: “The bike beat the car.”

First, pushing out cars improves life for most inhabitants. Paris has reduced traffic accidents, noise and air pollution. More than 300 “school streets” have been pedestrianised; kids play there after school. More than ever before, Paris is a sea of terraces: from April to October, cafés and restaurants can put tables on parking spaces outside their premises. Cities shouldn’t be storage spaces for heaps of metal.

Avenue Lamoricière in the 12th has introduced play areas © Joséphine Brueder/Ville de Paris

Lesson two is that banishing cars doesn’t hurt an urban economy. Retailers often worry it will deter their customers. Studies repeatedly show it doesn’t. More broadly, French Hidalgo-haters need to explain why Paris is in the global top four of business-focused rankings of cities...

Lesson three: car-free cities must offer people good alternative ways to travel. Paris itself does: it has world-class public transport plus cycle lanes. Only 28 per cent of Parisian households own a car. But Paris is a relatively small city of 2.1 million inhabitants. The five million people living outside the ring road in the “Grand Paris” metropole are less well served.

Lesson four: a city needs to control deliveries (typically made in Paris by double-parked vans). A study by MIT found that delaying deliveries by five minutes could cut the kilometres travelled by delivery vehicles by about 30 per cent, because that lets transporters bundle parcels. To do this, cities need to meet a bigger challenge: get a grip on tech firms operating in their streets, and get those firms’ data. Firms like Waze or Google often possess the deepest knowledge of a city’s workings, says Missika.

Lesson five: cities must discipline bikes. Aggressive cyclists terrorise pedestrians. Early motorists were just as wild until laws came in. Grégoire (himself once fined for cycling with earphones on) promises stricter policing.

Note, he doesn't mention the Velib' (Velo Liberation=Freedom) bike sharing program which predates Hidalgo and ushered in a more bicycle-centric mode in a big way--one that "gave permission" to cities across the globe to do something similar.  

Other actions built from this one, the same way that Portland has incrementally built its sustainable mobility infrastructure ("A summary of my impressions of Portland Oregon," 2005).  While that entry is 20 years old, Portland furthered incremental positive change with streetcar expansion, the transit-bike-walking only bridge, the Aerial Tram, promotion of EVs, etc.

The UK has adopted the Paris school street model; NYC also.

I think lessons two and three should be reversed.  You can't have a sustainable mobility dominated transportation policy if you don't have great transit, let alone infrastructure supportive of walking and biking.  I consider it a privilege to have lived in DC where this kind of mobility paradigm is doable.  I biked to work and for most of my errands for 30+ years.

Salt Lake is developing bike infrastructure to the point where the State Legislature is pissed, seeing it as making it hard for them to drive to and from the Capitol ("After a brush with death, a bill to give Utah more control over SLC streets awaits Cox’s signature. Here’s what it would do.," Salt Lake Tribune).  But I was thinking about this and what Salt Lake isn't doing, which is true for just about every jurisdiction in the US, is proactively building the base of every day cycling.

Salt Lake in its core is flat and very hilly (foothills) on its east and northeast sides.  Start by promoting the hell out of biking in the core where it's relatively easy to do ("Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 26 programs").

9 Line adjacent to Liberty Park, Salt Lake City.

The state law affects Sugar House Park, where I am on the board.  We want to replace the right most lane of 2100 South into an enhanced bike lane, which the city is doing by other parks.  And add bike share stations.  

And I would like to have national best practice bike parking in the form of Biceberg underground kiosks (although the water table is an issue in some areas of the park).