A car free day in Paris and Brussels

[Thoglette]

In the guardian
photo essay



Hadn't heard of this before today. But I'm not reading franophone press.

[g-boaf]

That just seems like it is a cover up for problems of too many cars.

The best riding experience over in France is outside of the big cities, in those smaller towns, particularly those that are ski resorts. Great roads, calm traffic and some of the nicest people around.

The people there ride a lot too, even in the mountains on all sorts of various bikes.

[antigee]

That just seems like it is a cover up for problems of too many cars.

The best riding experience over in France is outside of the big cities, in those smaller towns, particularly those that are ski resorts. Great roads, calm traffic and some of the nicest people around.

The people there ride a lot too, even in the mountains on all sorts of various bikes.

Paris does has a serious air quality problem - diesel cars outnumber petrol cars in France and many are relatively old - not withstanding that Paris is an interesting case - Politicians have done the difficult thing - readable article here:

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/ ... is/550718/

summary for City of Paris I believe (equivalent to CBD) not the metropolitan area:
1990 - 2018
Driving trips down 45%
Cycling increase 10 fold
Public Transport use up 30%
2000-2018
Traffic fatalities reduced 40%

recently spent a couple of days in Grenoble (population 0.5m) some segregated cycle lanes, contraflow cycle lanes on all one way streets, plenty of painted cycle lanes - lots of people going about everyday business by bicycle - mingling with traffic with speed limits at 30km/hr on most streets, on and off the pavements and car free areas with no apparent problem to pedestrians - fluro very rare and actually saw children cycling to and from school