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.
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.
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.
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...
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 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.
> “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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 it is a newborn and you do not bring the stroller nor any clothes on rainy days it is 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.
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.
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 )
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.
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.
> 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 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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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 feasible?" 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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...
Nah, jk, it's a beautiful day today and I'm thinking of going for a ride.
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.
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.
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 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?
https://adventure.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Hero-Gettin...
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.
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.
Europeans don't drive Suburbans. They drive crossovers that are, if anything, shorter than the equivalent sedan or wagon.
You’re missing the point: tourists are good for the city. If Paris gets a reputation of being polluted, tourism will decline.
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.
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.
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...
Instead of encouraging motorists to make better choices, they just end up feeling part of a money grab
Also complaining is easy, I could do it right now here on HN from any bathroom in the world; voting is comparatively much harder.
> 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 it is a newborn and you do not bring the stroller nor any clothes on rainy days it is 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.
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.
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 )
- 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.
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.
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.
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".
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://content.tfl.gov.uk/the-impact-20mph-limits-and-zones...
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.
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.
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 feasible?" 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 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.
looks at the reason
CARS.
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
Driving is for plebes
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.
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.
Say what you mean to say.
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]
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.