Paris’ Emerging Cycle Network: My Reflections

To wrap up my Paris series, I get off the bike to give you my take on this emerging cycle network. Bottomline: The network is taking shape, people and pups are clearly enjoying it, and more needs to be done to decrease the number of motor vehicles in the city center.

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Background:
Hi Everyone! My name is John Simmerman, and I’m a health promotion and public health professional with over 30 years of experience. Over the years, my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization in how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.

Since 2010, I’ve been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be while striving to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a “Culture of Activity” for “All Ages & Abilities.”

The Active Towns Channel features my original video content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.

Thanks once again for tuning in! I hope you find this content helpful and insightful.

Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2023

Foreign Welcome to the active towns Channel I’m John Zimmerman and this is my wrap-up video from my Paris visit from last November uh and what I’m going to do is just kind of play a little bit of video uh in the background as I give you my Reflections and thoughts about what that

Experience was really all about uh what we’re seeing on screen here is uh the former Motorway along the sen that was turned into a walking and biking environment and this is quintessential Paris right here uh throngs of people getting around in the streets no better way to exemplify that truly streets are

For people than right here in Paris now if you’ve watched some of my ride-along series videos uh you know that I was out and about exploring all different parts of Paris including making my way up to the northern suburbs this is the playlist I think there’s 16 or 17 videos

Out there right now one of the streets I spent a lot of time on was this one right here I was near the hotel the boulevard is Sebastopol um really quite extraordinary when you consider the amount of vibrancy and the number of people walking and biking

Along this stretch of road I love this shot here just because of the large cargo bike that is there we’re seeing more and more of this in many of our large cities and so Paris was no exception to that as well just wonderful to see this type of psychologist

Logistics coming into fruition in in these cities I mean it’s absolutely necessary they’re far too dense and far too busy to have massive delivery Vans all over the place and many as you may know I did attend the international cargo bike festival at the end of October and again all this footage is

From last November and October and yeah just really wonderful to see cargo bikes starting to be you used commercially in psychologist Logistics much needed and you’ll see that repeated throughout some of this footage is you know how incredibly important it is to get some of those delivery vehicles off of the

Streets especially in these incredibly busy environments now you see a near Miss right there and that’s going to be another similar theme that you will see throughout here another near Miss at that same intersection and that’s one of the biggest challenges I think we have is we’re seeing a cultural shift here in

Paris and we we’re getting some protected bikeways that’s fantastic but at the same time we still have a driving mentality an aggressive driving mentality that exists in this environment and so there’s a little bit of you know push and shove happening along here a little bit of adjustment

Happening to uh you know being able to adjust the behavior accordingly but what I really want to emphasize on you know some of this video that we’re going to see here today is the fact that it is in fact working we’re seeing people navigating through the city and we also

Really I think see just how incredibly important it is for a busy City like Paris a vibrant City like Paris to be able to uh Embrace active mobility and micro Mobility uh for everyone being able to get around the city all ages and abilities out there uh getting around

The city through active Mobility this is really what we need to do in many of our cities all of our cities to become more healthful to become more sustainable to become more vibrant we don’t really you know survive we don’t really Thrive if we are in an environment which is

Dominated by automobiles now this particular Street we do see that there’s still automobiles here there’s still probably way too many Automobiles and now we’re at a different location here and we’re seeing that you know we seize taxis we see the buses but we also see people still wanting to get around by

Walking and biking and that is I think a key thing the other thing I want to point out is that in many of these images that you’re seeing you’re seeing the valibe bikes out there you’re seeing some lime bikes out there so Bike Share is really thriving in the city of Paris

And I have to believe that part of that is because that we are seeing these enhancements in the bicycle Network in place see another cargo bike there I even saw a couple of cargo bikes that looked like they might be part of the cargo Bike Share system and I think

That’s really really important to embrace that concept as well cargo bikes are expensive so if you can have a cargo bike sharing system like a carguru or or any of the other types of systems that are out there I think it’s really really a great way to bring that barrier down

But then again there’s another Bike Share bike right there I believe and I think I’ve seen some data to uh to match this that many local parisians are actually using the Bike Share system so it’s not just tourists that are out there the other thing that you see in

Some of these images is that we’re seeing parents with their kids on their bikes again this is sort of the litmus test to see if you are actually being successful with your bicycle Network are you getting parents out there are you getting kids out there another great

Cargo bike box there uh and I I think you can’t you know just kind of brush that aside because if you’re getting the people using a bike share and they’re feeling safe enough to do so without wearing a helmet you get kids you get parents out there this is an indication

That we are actually succeeding at creating an all ages and abilities Network which is the whole point you want to be able to have an environment which is truly safe and inviting to everybody to encourage them to to move forward one of the the key things that

You also are starting to see too in this type of network is you’re seeing people who have disabilities and uh you know other other challenges you know physically challenged uh and are able to use their Mobility devices we’ll see some images later of a person in a wheelchair

Navigating down the route of Rivoli and I think that that is something that we really have to lean into and accept is that this is not bike infrastructure this isn’t about bikes per se bikes are simply a tool manifestation of Mobility but when you create a safe and inviting

Active Mobility Network like this you are able to extend Mobility out to those with challenged mobility issues and they’re able to use there’s motor scooters and their wheelchairs in this type of environment and this is all some images right here from the Rooter Rivoli and one of the things I wanted to check

On here is seeing that there is a split here so I’m actually standing right between the two different Lanes of the active Mobility Lanes here and uh it’s so wide that oftentimes people are just going straight and going kind of the wrong way so on this wide Boulevard around here take a look

They’ve cut it down all the way to just one lane technically the bus lane because of the market that is opening up So clearly these lanes are not necessary I then jumped into uh walking through the marketplace uh I I absolutely love touring my way through these uh Street fires and Street Market places and just down the block from where that market is set up you’ll see that this

Little area has bike parking and it’s clearly had a road reduction and again you know you just are so encouraged to see so many people out and again all ages and abilities different Mobility modes you see people on the the scooters as well I’m also noticing so many on-street bike parking facilities

Again what a better way to reimagine what a street is for than to put in uh bike chair bike parking look at this massive Bike Share station you saw the repair person working on the valibe bikes there but like I mean you know like I’m trying to say is that

How better than to reimagine that space a single parking space on a street can be reimagined as a parking space for 12 different bicycles and so it really is a much more efficient way to move forward another great image of you know parents with kids out there

Also you know worth noting that it’s not like this is a massive war on cars and and cars aren’t allowed in the city anymore there’s plenty of cars there’s still too many cars really but really on these main streets we’re seeing the inclusion of protected and separated facilities we’ll see a little

Bit later some more truly traffic calmed areas and and streets that really are just you know there’s nothing to them they’re super narrow and they’re shared space and their low speed environments which is what you see one block off of you know many of these streets that we see here where there’s massive

Infrastructure lots of bikes and lots of people there the smaller streets the narrow streets the historic streets are almost all just super narrow shared spaces and you know and it’s it’s wonderful because they’re super super low speed environments and these are just a series of still shots with photos

Just to try to capture a little bit of that movement love the dogs in the cargo bikes as well it just really brings a smile to my face as well as all the parents with their kids hey thank you all so very much for watching uh before

We leave I want to show you some night scenes okay and I was just uh popping into the bar back there the Frog day have a beer and they were saying hey yeah this is like a really slow night apparently it’s a holiday weekend and a lot of people are

Not even in Paris right now so but how incredible it was I mean just that whole intersection back there traffic calmed and apparently it’s been this way for the last 10 15 years and yeah so cool gotta love it hey want to send a big huge thank you

Out to all my active towns ambassadors supporting me out on patreon buy me a coffee YouTube super thanks Rick down there as well as buying things from the active Town store including streets of fruit people shirts water bottles coffee mugs all that good stuff hey every

Little bit adds up and it really is much appreciated thank you all so much well this is John signing off by wishing you much activity health and happiness cheers