See Many of Paris’ Newest Bike Lanes (And a Whole Lot More!)

I was in Paris in November. I wanted to make just a short follow-up on what’s happening with bike lanes as my chief reason for going was to document school streets (film coming in early January!) but when I met up with a few people and was out around the city all you see is road construction going on. I wish this much bike construction happened in NYC!

So I got the drop on some of the newest installed lanes and one new car-free space! Check them out here. This film stretched to twice its length and still had to leave lots of great footage out. In one instance I literally was heading to interview Derek and I immediately said, “Hey, didn’t the bike lane here used to be on the other side of the street?” And my recollection (even though I was only there a few minutes on my last trip) was they did improve the street.

Paris does have the Olympics coming so it’s all hands on deck. The entire city is mobilized to make the transportation system work as efficiently as possible to move the athletes, visitors, city officials and residents around during that month. But even with that being true it is stunning to see the building going on.

Here we’re at the intersection of a couple of uh generations of bike paths we’ve got the two-way bike path which was one of the big major original projects it’s really kind of under dimensioned it’s narrower than it should be and then they develop his Gant which

Are a single Lane and so you’ve got one on each side of the street but they basically run on the sidewalks what’s happened is that they’ve been so successful that you have really large numbers of people cycling to work or biking around the city and so every

Intersection you have way too many bikes compared to what it’s been designed for and then there’s some new streets now the the latest one on are really uh a level up from all of that this iset it’s one of the longest streets in Paris and

This is one of the newest M paths in Paris it’s a two-way bike path just opened up about a month ago this section of it and they’re still building the the next section uh it’s one of the new generations of bicycle paths in uh in Paris uh what’s really nice about it is

That first of all the width is constant so it doesn’t get narrower like some of the older ones you’re not sharing uh the sidewalk with pedestrians it’s pretty well protected so it’s a pretty safe and comfortable way to uh travel on bike popular with cyclists and and this a

Real demonstration of the design capabilities that they have in the city now when I came back 5 years ago I was so happy that there were bike lane but then people starting biking more and more and the bike lane sometimes are very narrow so now what’s happening is

Also that we get like bike lane that are wider now uh we need to widen all these uh bike Lanes so now having 1 M 80 for each uh uh Direction flow we are hoping that we are building infrastructure for the future but it might not be enough we

Might need to have them even Wider all right well we’re on boulev San Melle near downtown Paris in front of the plon which is sbon University it’s a very busy street that takes you from the outskirts stly South into uh ID so core of downtown it used to be an interesting place to go biking because of all the

Heavy traffic so then they added a sh shared bus taxi and bike Lan which was pretty good and it’s over there where you can see the bus except for you would often find yourself in conflict with buses and taxis and uh you know you you

Slow down taxi you pull over to the you know over where the garbage is and let them pass you and stuff so now what they added was a dedicated bicycle lane on this side of the road and uh later they updated it to be bidirectional so so now

We got this bidirectional bike lane heading up on this on the right side of the road here and when they did it they added separation a lot of people know that they put in bike lanes and then what happens immediately is the delivery trucks come and block your bike lane

You’re forced back out into regular traffic that’s a common frustration I kind of sympathize with the delivery guys they need to do their job and they need a place to stop so what Paris has done in a lot of places now they’re using deliveries as a safety feature for

The bike so what you see here marked in yellow is an area called Lon which is French for deliveries so it’s deliberately made so that the the vehicles that are doing their deliveries and the guys working block traffic from the bicycle lane so it actually gives you separation instead of giving you Danger so I have been to Paris a number of times and I remember riding in little teeny little gutters next to cars and you know and a lot of those where people had pulled over in their cars and blocked them and suddenly Paris has opened up for people I mean there are a

Number of of protected bik Lanes fully protected bik Lanes with you know concrete barriers and this clever mayor an hialgo has also said because the Olympics are coming we should be a welcoming City for all people and the best way to do that is to open some of

Our most beautiful and iconic streets including the rud rivi the rud RI is a main East West axis uh actually it’s a almost the historical east east west axis of Paris and uh it had about 25,000 cars a day just three years ago in 20 2019 just before covid we had we had

That that amount of cars and and buses now we have uh in the range of 25,000 bicycles a day that’s because we have suppressed the through traffic and now that street the rud rival is just for people on bikes people walking taxi cabs and uh buses it’s totally

Transformed that area and of course it’s turned it into this even more vibrant even more important Street for Parisians so I live in the 11 there is like three roundabouts uh the one at Republic basti and n it was only for cars not even for if even if you were walking there it will be an issue you will have to go all around to go from

One point to another now all those three roundabouts all have bike Lanes the one at basti I recommend you to go cuz it’s really well done it’s like all around the whole the the basti tower uh it changed everything the other thing was the roundabout is like they all have a

Beautiful monument in the middle that you will never never have access to back then because cars were all around it now they have to do the one at chiz uh so we can finally access to one of the most important monument in Paris so Stein vanan who showed me

Around Paris last time I was here said do not leave Paris but without visiting Kade Dev I didn’t have a lot of time but when he told me it was now fully pedestrianized and called it the street of the future well I made time for a quick visit apparently during the middle

Of Co the street was closed every Sunday for recreation the street borders both sides of the Gana St Martin and it’s easy to see how popular it is I grabbed a viib and got up there very quickly and got caught in the middle of a downpour

But even when I got there there was still people walking a lot of people running bicycling and just generally enjoying the canal and after searching online for a while I was able to find a bit of video showing what the canal looks like when there are cars on it and

I think it’s so important that people have places to recreate and relax in big cities where you don’t hear the noise of Cars so here we out here in the 12 hour still where the municipality is very ambitious on like developing bicycle closes closing streets and everything so here is an example where before the streets was a two line uh Street for C basically all this was for cars and the

Municipality decide to close it and to make it upper and for bicycle only so basically all the cars that you can see that come from the other side they have to use the big streets this Clos all the traffic a lot of traffic from cars that

Were coming from there I mean now you can see they are still some but uh before it was a very uh useful way for cars to go there through the exit of Paris and since we close this it’s way more difficult because it makes you go

Back from where you were so this helped the cyclist and also reduce the car by changing the traffic maps the French word is liberte and that’s what you feel when you’re biking in Paris it’s a liberating place to be particularly in the downtown area but it’s spreading out throughout the entire

City of Paris with the school streets and other bike bike pads I mean suddenly if you’re a person who walks in bikes places you have the the freedom the liberte to go anywhere and that’s going to happen in the next well by the end of an hidalgo’s term which is in two years

I have great faith in her she’s got uh you know great plans underway and I believe she actually has the the Imp to make them happen one of the amazing things here is how quickly these changes are taking place in Paris and I think a lot of people look at Holland and the

Netherlands as the example of what it could be if you’re really committed to Alternative mobility and ideas like that I think Holland is that example but Holland is what you can do if take four decades to steadily and go after these things and make things somewhere safe

Lighter touch Mobility Paris is what can happen if you really are aggressive you have the courage of your convictions and you go after it is what you can do in 10 years because when I came back from New York 5 years ago I was so shocked at how

Many bike lane I found cuz I left like in 2010 so back then I was not biking in Paris I will not bike because for me it was dangerous so hopefully in 5 years it will be even much better One of the under celebrated things I hope you’ve been able to see when you’re in Paris is something called the Paris trombone and it is this bike rack and this bike rack is phenomenal it’s extra very very strong so if you lock your bike to it you know they’re not going to

Cut through the rack that you’ve locked it to so it gets up high to the middle of a bike frame so you can actually lock your frame to something solid it has these two trombone like a paper clip things that give separation between the two bikes so your pedals and the other

Guy’s pedals aren’t intertwining with each other’s spokes very in the ground in two places and they put them about 3/4 a yard apart space in between enough room for two bikes in between when things get tight but just simple decent looking phenomenally functional stuff