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If you’ve read anything about urban planning online recently, you’ve probably heard about the changes happening Paris. Mayor Anne Hidalgos has become famous for her pro-cycling and pro-people policies, and for taking away space from automobiles. With a goal of becoming “100% Cyclable” by 2026, Paris is changing quickly.
For this video I took an NJB “Business Trip” to Paris to see these changes for myself.
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The “Champs-Élysées — history & perspectives” Study
PCA – STREAM
https://www.pca-stream.com/en/projects/champs-elysees-study-48
Paris Syndrome (パリ症候群):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
Brent Toderian on Twitter:
Tweets by BrentToderian
Hobbemakade 120 t/m 123 [1967]
https://archief.amsterdam/beeldbank/detail/9003fd4d-1606-9f04-3267-f74c0b6af063
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:08 Changes are happening in Paris
0:34 My experiences in Paris
1:07 Travelling to Paris
1:43 Introducing Altis Play
2:22 First Impressions
3:10 Temporary infrastructure becoming permanent
3:48 The cycling experience
4:22 Taking space away from cars
6:50 This is all great let’s end the video!
7:11 Paris syndrome for bicycles
8:31 Slow change vs. fast change
8:56 Rough edges
10:51 The pedestrian experience
11:53 Conclusion
12:24 Merci à mes supporters sur Patreon
12:37 Outro
34 Comments
Special thanks to Altis Play who showed me around Paris! You can see his video about our ride in Paris here (French with English subtitles):
https://youtu.be/JuwDiKWEBgY
His channel is here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/AlTi5play
If you are interested in Francophone cycling content, be sure to check it out!
An artifact; a paper map! 😂🤣😂🤣
Only ever own upright dutch bicycles. 😁
i visited Paris this past month and was quite impressed with the huge bike lanes
"Here's my wife using an artifact known as a "paper map"." 🤣🤣🤣
Some of these new paths are way too uncomfortably narrow for two way traffic next to each other
An electric vehicle? Both me and my fiancée have recently been rear-ended by someone on a electric vehicle, I don't know, but over here in Amsterdam electric vehicles make people behave like total morons on cycle-paths and we concider E-bikes the greatest threat to safety on cycle-paths.
The doctor at first aid , while stitching the deep cut on her shin, said that indeed in most of this kind of accidents electric vehicles were involved. Now she is on antibiotics, because her entire leg was swollen. Both of us have lost our feeling of safety on our cycle paths because of these electric morons.
In theory these things should not be a lot more dangerous than muscle-bikes, because on a muscle-bike you can go just as fast. But on a muscle bike you are more inclined to go with the flow, because when you go faster you have to use the brakes and accelerate constantly, which is tiring, when accelerating is effortless it seems people are more inclined to press themselves through busy traffic on a narrow cycle-path, which leads to accidents.
Ceterum vehicula electrica nostris cyclis tramitis damnanda esse censeo.
Notice how nobody is a (male) karen to tell him he not allowed to film and provide ID.
I'm not entirely against making cities more bicycle and pedestrian friendly, but it should not be done by punishing drivers. Take Los Angeles. The whole city was designed around cars. You truly cannot get around without one. So when city planers take away street lanes and convert them into bike lanes, you are making life miserable for drivers because unfortunately you STILL need a car to get around. There are no alternatives!
So it can be done things can change
Would like this transformation to happen in Rome
I love your videos , I love what you do and your ideas, I was involved in bike lane activism back in NYC before covid offering new bike lanes and patching up potholes everywhere. I really hope more US cities follow NYC's and Portland's way of building bike infra.
If you lived in Paris, you would understand why this change sucks. Bikers don't respect traffic rules in Paris fuck these bourgois stopping working people for coming to Paris by car.
How I wish something like this could happen in my city in the USA. 2 out of the 3 mayoral candidates want to stop the current push to make our city more pedestrian and bike friendly. One actually states on his website to make Rochester’s transit plan “car based.” How disappointing.
Pedestrian priority has always been a thing in Paris. Pedestrians are supposed to "just walk" and drivers did actually stop or slow down. Standing and waiting on the sidewalk on the other hand was pointless. No driver would care. Just walk and hope for the best 😂
I'm french (not from Paris though) and from a cycling family, I mean, we cycle for sport, for fun, and to travel. But I have never seen more bicycles on a daily basis than now, post COVID lockdowns. I notice this every time I have to use the car, and I see so much more cyclist that I'm used to, getting to work, or even for some small grocery trips. That's very cool
Ooo acoustic bikes
Come here to Reading and you'll be even more confused when cycling…
Design the city for the people living in the city. Not for the people in the suburbs committing in with cars, causing traffic, and polluting the air.
Seeing this always makes me upset when I think about my country America how we threw away such a good plan and we are simultaneously screwing ourselves while continuously thinking that we are not the problem it really hurts me it really does and how small Americans like me can't really even raise their voice that much but that doesn't mean we're not going to try
You should discuss the cost of train tickets. Most working people take flix bus or fly because it’s so much cheaper than trains.
The local government of Bremen (Germany) decided in 2019 to get their city centre district 100% car-free until 2030 and organize fast bike lanes into all other districts and into the surrounding cities.
Things I loved and want here (MPLS/St Paul, MN): 1. The cyclist counters (much like the trackers on water bottle filling fountains), 2. The water fountains, 3. The explicit permission for cyclists to treat red lights like yield signs. There are SO MANY intersections at which that would make sense!
In the US, we have rideouts with 100s of riders, who can turn any city into a cycling city instantly. 🤣
I wondering how are cycling infrastructures in rural zone in Netherlands ?
I have to admit that I've never seen this transformation in that point of view, many of us french who drive in Paris know the city for its chaos circulation, and Hidalgo's project is very criticyse in France but yeah there is a necessity to reduce circulation.
But the situation of Paris make it complicate because it's still the capital of France which is a very centralize state to the Paris agglomeration.
That mean in additional to the Parisian population traffic and from the whole Ile-de-France (12 millions inhabitants) you have to count the traffic transit from the rest of France (the province like we said here) so it's a difficult task to make a great cohabitation between bike, pedestrians, motorcycles and cars.
As a driver it's rare for me to enter inside Paris but I often transit in the peripheric or outside major highways and you have to be very careful because of motorcyclists who are autorised to driver between the cars so imagine inside Paris with cyclists, pedestrians, electric trotinettes and other urban alternative vehicules like hoverboards…
This has to be considered too
I'm just putting out there, but all zebra crossings should prioritize pedestrians, it should just mean one thing everywhere.
10:10 man, riding in Mexico City and Estado de México (entity adjacent to the capital) is full of "scary moments" just like that one. The scenario here is quite discouraging, when the public administration hints a remote possibility of installing a bike lane in a main or secondary road, neighbors will fiercely oppose to it arguing "it will increase traffic and accidents" and mobilize against it, that's literally the only moment in their lives where they will mobilize for anything, they truly hate cyclist. Now imagine them when they drive, there's at least one dead cyclist per week due to road accidents caused by cars/trucks. How are we not going to be discouraged from using bikes with a scenario like that. That's why there's always more cars and cars. A real hellscape, a car dystopia.
I have been both motivated and saddened from watching a few of your videos. One, because it confirms the idea that better cities are possible, and saddened as I realize we, countries in Latin America, are lightyears away from getting rid of the primitive thought of cars being the only way of moving in a city (which is the root of many ills).
My one pet peeve with this is handicap accessibility. As someone with disability who uses a 3 wheeled bike, sometimes I'm in need of transportation by car. Public transportation isn't an option cause I'm too sick and a taxi is too expensive. Allowing people with for instance a disability parking sign in the lanes like here designated to busses and taxis would be a way to make it accessible for people with disabilities. As much as the vision and changes are great for some things, it's excluding for some folks with disabilities
Come and see Barcelona cycling changes
I will say that in Wales, bike infrastructure has gotten a lot better over the past few years. When I started bike commuting in 2015 I didn't even bother riding on the roads and didn't even know that cycling on the pavement was illegal. Then when I learnt that I started cycling on the roads and was always an exhausted sweaty mess because I was always riding at full speed to get out of busy roads as quickly as possible.
Now in 2022 the bike infrastructure still isn't perfect, but I probably spend at least half of my journeys off the roads which makes riding so much more enjoyable.
And of course people still get really mad at the council for building bike lanes, even though basically all of the infrastructure has been built on pavements, not the road.
Bravo Paris! Hope you follow our 🇳🇱🌷 example and make the bicycle path a dark red color.
Did not understand why the Eiffel tower in Las Vegas was shown several times (does that really create a “Paris” effect?)
i am shocked you are an old person. i thought you were in your twenties.
Thanks