32 votes

French revolution: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in Paris

1 comment

  1. Nsutdwa
    Link
    It's really great to see a city put policies in place that drive towards this kind of result and see it realised. If cities can make cycling infrastructure widespread and safe, "normal" people...

    It's really great to see a city put policies in place that drive towards this kind of result and see it realised. If cities can make cycling infrastructure widespread and safe, "normal" people will use it, not just hard-core cycling aficionados. The endless chicken-and-egg debate regarding whether it's worth building cycling infrastructure is incredibly annoying - we have examples like this (and other cities, Paris isn't the first,by any means, although it's a very useful case now) showing that if you build it, they will come. I saw someone comparing the stance of "but nobody uses bikes so why build it out?" to measuring the need for a bridge over a river by looking at how many people currently swim across the river.

    I move around my city by bike nearly every single time I have to travel, but it's still way too dangerous to suggest to my wife or child that they should do the same. The other day, I found my first protected bike lane - normally there's a picture of a bike in the lane and it's denominated a "car-bike" lane, which is exactly as useless as it sounds.

    11 votes