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People not living in Paris can't even grasp how much the city has changed in just 6 years. Starting a bit before 2020 but massively accelerated by the covid situation (and public transport saturation). You could barely cycle safely before and now it's hard to not find a bike lane.

Because of the fast pace, of course not everything is perfect but we have to celebrate this as much as we can.




That's a problem I desperately hope the US has to encounter soon. Too much demand and we have to accelerate our plans to satisfy all those people on bikes!


Too much demand

That's interesting because the article says the opposite, that supply (mostly) proceeds demand when it comes to mobility infrastructure. The fact that demand is showing so readily indicates there is much unrealized potential there.


It's called "induced demand" when people don't like it - but for almost all transportation you need the supply before the demand because there's not really any other way to go about it. You can try to work out where people are currently traveling and build on that, but it's such a feedback loop it may not work.

One of the most common examples I know of is building a metro line to "nowhere" (e.g. a few stops past where it ends) - in 5-10 years that will be a bustling area because now it's connected.


US cities should probably first start focusing on pedestrians.


With the way many areas of the US are laid out (being car-centric), a bike bias may be needed. Bikes to get to where you want to go, then once you’re there, walk around.

Currently, a lot of people need to drive to get to an area they would walk. Everything is very spread out.


I can walk with my toddler and infant and post c-section wife. I can't bike ride with them.

Of course, I can also drive almost anywhere with them.


Great! if most other people are walking and biking, that's less traffic on the road to slow you down and endanger those young children.


There are various solutions for biking with an infant, and from what I can tell, a c-section takes 6-8 weeks for recovery. No one ever side bikes should be the only possible form for transport. Use the car for 2 months while your wife recovers, for the trips she needs to take. If you live in a walkable area, go for a walk.

A bike path is easier to drop in than rebuilding entire cites and relocating the entire population around those walkable areas. Bike paths take years, consolidating urban sprawl would take decades, even if the political will existed.


The best way to help pedestrians is to start removing cars.

The best way to do this is to install public transport and facilitate bike use.


I concur: I used to ride a bike in Paris during the mid 2010 and I eventually left the city in 2017 in part because I was fed up with the difficulty of the endeavor. And now everytime I travel back there I'm amazed at how far it's gone already, and the number of cyclists keep rising every time!

This year I started seeing a significant amount of cargo bikes, the things that I had only seen in the Nederland before.

I don't know when the growth will stop, but it's already beyond what I could even imagine back then.


I'm hoping Vienna will learn from this and accelerate things here a bit.




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