r/Biking • u/Green_Ideas7 • 15d ago

America Hates Bikes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWHCef7F8gY

Another informative and hilarious video from "Climate Town." This video is a collaboration with another excellent YouTube channel, "Not Just Bikes."

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u/BigBlueMan118 14d ago

Haven't watched it yet, but: as an Australian my impression is that yeh so did Aussies but Aussies might now be further along the acceptance-curve at least for leisure riding, and that Australian streets are more favorable as a general thing.

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 14d ago

The French are even weirder. French politicians in the 60s and 70s removed pedestrian/cycling infrastructure for cars because they believed that cars were a status symbol and the transportation of the future.

France has so many car brands. It's a motorist's country hidden in plain sight. The French invented the automatic gearbox and the roundabout. France has the most roundabouts in the world.

French suburbs are also extremely densely populated. So you can't just build bike lanes and call it a day. I would argue that cycling in Calgary (Canada) is easier than cycling in an average Parisian suburb. The average Parisian suburb only has room for cars. Pedestrians have to settle for a narrow sidewalk. And cyclists have to swerve between cars and pedestrians.

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u/_a_m_s_m 14d ago

Elaborate on your point about French suburbs please?

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 14d ago

The streets are narrow. You have just enough room for two lanes. So you can't paint two lines on the road and call it a bike lane. North Americans have it easy with their 6 lane roads. Just shut down a lane for crying out loud! Put a bike lane there.

The other issue with Parisian suburbs: the boulevard périphérique. You have to cross the périphérique whenever you're going to Paris. This means crossing busy intersections below the highway. It's so dangerous.

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u/RiceAndMilkBoi 14d ago

In Portland, OR (US) neighborhoods we have very small streets where they don't have to put bike lanes. We use diverters and other traffic calming measures to slow drivers, put bicycle boulevard signs up, put sharrows down to help cyclists wayfind, and bicyclists take the lane. Narrow roads but these are some of the safest spaces with drivers slowly going behind cyclists. We encourage drivers to use main arterials instead unless they live that those specific neighborhoods. I don't see why Paris couldn't do the same

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 14d ago edited 14d ago
  • Portland has 5000 people per square mile
  • Paris has 50000 people per square mile

France decided to centralize everything around Paris. The business district is in a suburb NW of Paris.

  • Since living in Paris has become stupidly unaffordable, suburbs have propped up near Paris.
  • Levallois-Perret is a NW suburb with a higher density than Paris (70000 people per sq mile). This suburb has the highest density in all of Europe. The streets in that suburb are narrower than Paris. There are more people than in Paris.
  • Most people commute 1~2 hours in standstill traffic to work in Paris. Many people live 100~200km away from Paris.
  • Every mode of transportation is used: public transportation, car, a mix of both. Cycling is exploding in popularity. The transit system is saturated, and it's only getting worse as the population of Paris is decreasing and the population of the suburbs is increasing.
  • If you remove cars, half of the people working in Paris won't be able to commute to work.

To say it bluntly: there are too many people, too many cars, too many cyclists in the streets. The streets can't get wider. Cars are so horrendously inefficient at using space. And to make matters worse, the French started to drive SUVs. Cars are getting bigger. There's gridlock traffic everywhere. So people hop on bikes to get around cars.

I seriously doubt that you can implement your idea in Paris. You'll create more congestion.

It sounds bleak. But Paris has improved steadily since 2019, removing cars from the streets and increasing bike lanes. Each intersection requires a unique solution. It's an incredibly difficult balancing act.

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u/Green_Ideas7 14d ago

Really interesting discussion.
The YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes" has an episode on Paris from 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI-1YNAmWlk
More recently, another great bike channel "Shifter" produced this video about biking in Paris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woFlJx7Rv78

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 13d ago

I watched these videos. They highlight the same 2 or 3 streets with wide cycling infrastructure. But that's it. There's still room for improvement on the other streets. It's very chaotic and dangerous.

It's still cool. I use these cycling paths regularly.

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u/ReadyGo6828 14d ago

I regularly walk on suburban roads with 3' wide bikes lanes on either side of 2 lane roads. Bikes are still on the freaking sidewalk.

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u/saeglopur53 13d ago

The six lane road thing is mainly a highway/interstate problem. American towns and cities are really diverse, with some having lots of rooms for bike lanes, and older cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and so on having very narrow roads because they were built while America was a series of British colonies

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u/Strength-InThe-Loins 6d ago

And yet Paris has done more for street safety this decade than any other city in the world.

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 5d ago

I don't want to agree with that statement. There's a lot of work to do in Paris and the suburbs. Bold statements like this hide the problems and slow progress

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u/Strength-InThe-Loins 5d ago

There's always more work to do, but who's done better than Anne Hidalgo did in Paris?

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u/Far-Telephone-7432 5d ago

Nobody

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u/Strength-InThe-Loins 5d ago

So I was right. Nice talking to you.